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ESSAYS   UPON 

SOME    CONTROVERTED 

QUESTIONS 


Q.MI 


BY 

THOMAS  H.  HUXLEY,  F.R.S, 


NEW    YORK 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1893 
BU,^on  COLLEGE  LIBRAKY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


(Lnt 
M  ill, 


COPYRIGHT,   1892, 

By  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


Electrotyped  and  Printed 
at  the  appleton  press,  u.  s.  a. 


>■'■  "    -         .' 


103925 


I  am  indebted  to  the  editors  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  and  of  the 
Fortnightly  Review  for  permission  to  reprint  such  of  the  following 
Essays  as  have  appeared  in  the  pages  of  those  periodicals :  and  so  large 
a  proportion  of  the  later  papers  has  been  published  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  that  my  acknowledgments  are  especially  due  to  Mr.  Knowles. 

T.  H.  H. 

May  U,  1892. 


>••-; 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Prologue 1 

I. — The  Rise  and  Progress  of  Paleontology      ...      41 
An  Address  delivered  at  the  York  Meeting  of  the 
British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science 
1881. 
II. — The  Interpreters  of   Genesis  and  the  Interpreters 

of  Nature 56 

Nineteenth  Century,  December,  1885. 

III.-4-Mr.  Gladstone  and  Genesis      .        • .      .        .        .        .74 
Ibid.,  February,  1886. 

Note  on  the  Proper  Sense  of  the  "Mosaic"  Narra- 
tive of  the  Creation.        .        .        .  .       .96 

IV. — The    Evolution   of  Theology  :   an  Anthropological 

Study 101 

Nineteenth  Century,  March  and  April,  1886. 

V. — Science  and  Morals 163 

Fortnightly  Review,  November,  1886. 

VI. — Scientific  and  Pseudo-Scientific  Realism      .        .        .    184 
Nineteenth  Century,  February,  1887. 

VIL — Science  and  Pseudo-Science 206 

Nineteenth  Century,  April,  1887. 

VIII.— An  Episcopal  Trilogy 232 

Nineteenth  Century,  November,  1887. 

IX. — Agnosticism 256 

Nineteenth  Century,  February,  1889. 

X. — The  Value  of  Witness  to  the  Miraculous  .       .       .    294 
Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1889. 


vi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XI. — Agnosticism:  a  Rejoinder 317 

Nineteenth  Century,  April,  1889. 

XII. — Agnosticism  and  Christianity 350 

Nineteenth  Century,  June,  1889. 

XIII. — The  Lights  of  the  Church  and  the  Light  of  Science    391 

Nineteenth  Century,  July,  1890. 
XIV.— The  Keepers  of  the  Herd  of  Swine      ....    418 

Nineteenth  Century,  December,  1890. 
XV.-— Illustrations  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Controversial  Meth- 
ods            ....    437 

Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1891. 

XVI. — Hasisadra's  Adventure 456 

Nineteenth  Century,  June,  1891. 


PROLOGUE. 

Le  plus  grand  service  qu'on  puisse  rendre  a  la  science  est  d'y  faire 
place  nette  avant  d'y  rien  construire. — Cuvier. 

Most  of  the  Essays  comprised  in  the  present  volume  have 
been  written  during  the  last  six  or  seven  years,  without  pre- 
meditated purpose  or  intentional  connection,  in  reply  to  at- 
tacks upon  doctrines  which  I  hold  to  be  well  founded ;  or  in 
refutation  of  allegations  respecting  matters  lying  within  the 
province  of  natural  knowledge,  which  I  believe  to  be  errone- 
ous ;  and  they  bear  the  mark  of  their  origin  in  the  contro- 
versial tone  which  pervades  them. 

Of  polemical  writing,  as  of  other  kinds  of  warfare,  I  think 
it  may  be  said,  that  it  is  often  useful,  sometimes  necessary, 
and  always  more  or  less  of  an  evil.  It  is  useful,  when  it  attracts 
attention  to  topics  which  might  otherwise  be  neglected ;  and 
when,  as  does  sometimes  happen,  those  who  come  to  see  a 
contest  remain  to  think.  It  is  necessary,  when  the  interests 
of  truth  and  of  justice  are  at  stake.  It  is  an  evil,  in  so  far  as 
controversy  always  tends  to  degenerate  into  quarreling,  to 
swerve  from  the  great  issue  of  what  is  right  and  what  is 
wrong  to  the  very  small  question  of  who  is  right  and  who  is 
wrong.  I  venture  to  hope  that  the  useful  and  the  necessary 
were  more  conspicuous  than  the  evil  attributes  of  literary 
militancy,  when  these  papers  were  first  published ;  but  I 
have  had  some  hesitation  about  reprinting  them.  If  I  may 
judge  by  my  own  taste,  few  literary  dishes  are  less  appetizing 
than  cold  controversy ;  moreover,  there  is  an  air  of  unfairness 
about  the  presentation  of  only  one  side  of  a  discussion,  and  a 
flavor  of  unkindness  in  the  reproduction  of  "  winged  words," 


2  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

which,  however  appropriate  at  the  time  of  their  utterance, 
would  find  a  still  more  appropriate  place  in  oblivion.  Yet, 
since  I  could  hardly  ask  those  who  have  honored  me  by  their 
polemical  attentions  to  confer  lustre  on  this  collection,  by 
permitting  me  to  present  their  lucubrations  along  with  my 
own ;  and  since  it  would  be  a  manifest  wrong  to  them  to  deprive 
their,  by  no  means  rare,  vivacities  of  language  of  such  justifi- 
cation as  they  may  derive  from  similar  freedoms  on  my  part; 
I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  my  best  course  was  to  leave  the 
essays  just  as  they  were  written;*  assuring  my  honorable 
adversaries  that  any  heat  of  which  signs  may  remain  was 
generated,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  by  the  force  of  their  own  blows,  and  has  long  since 
been  dissipated  into  space. 

But,  however  the  polemical  concomitants  of  these  discus- 
sions may  be  regarded — or  better,  disregarded — there  is  no 
doubt  either  about  the  importance  of  the  topics  of  which 
they  treat,  or  as  to  the  public  interest  in  the  "  Controverted 
Questions "  with  which  they  deal.  Or  rather,  the  Contro- 
verted Question ;  for  disconnected  as  these  pieces  may,  per- 
haps, appear  to  be,  they  are,  in  fact,  concerned  only  with 
different  aspects  of  a  single  problem,  with  which  thinking  men 
have  been  occupied,  ever  since  they  began  seriously  to  consider 
the  wonderful  frame  of  things  in  which  their  lives  are  set, 
and  to  seek  for  trustworthy  guidance  among  its  intricacies. 

Experience  speedily  taught  them  that  the  shifting  scenes 
of  the  world's  stage  have  a  permanent  background;  that 
there  is  order  amidst  the  seeming  confusion,  and  that 
many  events  take  place  according  to  unchanging  rules.  To 
this  region  of  familiar  steadiness  and  customary  regularity 
they  gave  the  name  of  Nature.  But,  at  the  same  time,  their  in- 
fantile and  untutored  reason,  little  more,  as  yet,  than  the  play- 
fellow of  the  imagination,  led  them  to  believe  that  this  tangi- 

*  With  a  few  exceptions,  which  are  duly  noted  when  they  amount  to 
more  than  verbal  corrections. 


PROLOGUE.  3 

ble,  commonplace,  orderly  world  of  Nature  was  surrounded  and 
interpenetrated  by  another  intangible  and  mysterious  world,  no 
more  bound  by  fixed  rules  than,  as  they  fancied,  were  the 
thoughts  and  passions  which  coursed  through  their  minds  and 
seemed  to  exercise  an  intermittent  and  capricious  rule  over 
their  bodies.  They  attributed  to  the  entities,  with  which 
they  peopled  this  dim  and  dreadful  region,  an  unlimited 
amount  of  that  power  of  modifying  the  course  of  events  of 
which  they  themselves  possessed  a  small  share,  and  thus  came 
to  regard  them  as  not  merely  beyond,  but  above,  Nature. 

Hence  arose  the  conception  of  a  "  Supernature  "  antithetic 
to  "  Nature " — the  primitive  dualism  of  a  natural  world 
"  fixed  in  fate  "  and  a  supernatural,  left  to  the  free  play 
of  volition — which  has  pervaded  all  later  speculation  and, 
for  thousands  of  years,  has  exercised  a  profound  influence  on 
practice.  For  it  is  obvious  that,  on  this  theory  of  the  Uni- 
verse, the  successful  conduct  of  life  must  demand  careful 
attention  to  both  worlds ;  and,  if  either  is  to  be  neglected,  it 
may  be  safer  that  it  should  be  Nature.  In  any  given  con- 
tingency, it  must  doubtless  be  desirable  to  know  what  may 
be  expected  to  happen  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things? 
but  it  must  be  quite  as  necessary  to  have  some  inkling  of 
the  line  likely  to  be  taken  by  supernatural  agencies  able, 
and  possibly  willing,  to  suspend  or  reverse  that  course.  In- 
deed, logically  developed,  the  dualistic  theory  must  needs 
end  in  almost  exclusive  attention  to  Supernature,  and  in 
trust  that  its  over-ruling  strength  will  be  exerted  in  favor  of 
those  who  stand  well  with  its  denizens.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  lessons  of  the  great  schoolmaster,  experience,  have  hardly 
seemed  to  accord  with  this  conclusion.  They  have  taught, 
with  considerable  emphasis,  that  it  does  not  answer  to  neglect 
Nature ;  and  that,  on  the  whole,  the  more  attention  paid  to 
her  dictates  the  better  men  fare. 

Thus  the  theoretical  antithesis  brought  about  a  practical 
antagonism.  From  the  earliest  times  of  which  we  have  any 
knowledge,  Naturalism  and  Supernaturalism  have  consciously, 


4  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

or  unconsciously,  competed  and  struggled  with  one  another ; 
and  the  varying  fortunes  of  the  contest  are  written  in  the 
records  of  the  course  of  civilization,  from  those  of  Egypt  and 
Babylonia,  six  thousand  years  ago,  down  to  those  of  our  own 
time  and  people. 

These  records  inform  us  that,  so  far  as  men  have  paid  at- 
tention to  Nature,  they  have  been  rewarded  for  their  pains. 
They  have  developed  the  Arts  which  have  furnished  the  con- 
ditions of  civilized  existence ;  and  the  Sciences,  which  have 
been  a  progressive  revelation  of  reality  and  have  afforded  the 
best  discipline  of  the  mind  in  the  methods  of  discovering 
truth.  They  have  accumulated  a  vast  body  of  universally 
accepted  knowledge;  and  the  conceptions  of  man  and  of 
society,  of  morals  and  of  law,  based  upon  that  knowledge, 
are  every  day  more  and  more,  either  openly  or  tacitly,  ac- 
knowledged to  be  the  foundations  of  right  action. 

History  also  tells  us  that  the  field  of  the  supernatural  has 
rewarded  its  cultivators  with  a  harvest,  perhaps  not  less  luxuri- 
ant, but  of  a  different  character.  It  has  produced  an  almost 
infinite  diversity  of  Religions.  These,  if  we  set  aside  the  ethi- 
cal concomitants  upon  which  natural  knowledge  also  has  a 
claim,  are  composed  of  information  about  Supernature ;  they 
tell  us  of  the  attributes  of  supernatural  beings,  of  their  rela- 
tions with  Nature,  and  of  the  operations  by  which  their  inter- 
ference with  the  ordinary  course  of  events  can  be  secured  or 
averted.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that  supernaturalists 
have  attained  to  any  agreement  about  these  matters,  or  that 
history  indicates  a  widening  of  the  influence  of  supernatural- 
ism  on  practice,  with  the  onward  flow  of  time.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  various  religions  are,  to  a  great  extent,  mutually  ex- 
clusive; and  their  adherents  delight  in  charging  each  other, 
not  merely  with  error,  but  with  criminality,  deserving  and  en- 
suing punishment  of  infinite  severity.  In  singular  contrast 
with  natural  knowledge,  again,  the  acquaintance  of  mankind 
with  the  supernatural  appears  the  more  extensive  and  the 
more  exact,  and  the  influence  of  supernatural  doctrines  upon 


PROLOGUE.  5 

conduct  the  greater,  the  further  back  we  go  in  time  and  the 
lowbr  the  stage  of  civilization  submitted  to  investigation. 
Historically,  indeed,  there  would  seem  to  be  an  inverse  rela- 
tion between  supernatural  and  natural  knowledge.  As  the 
latter  has  widened,  gained  in  precision  and  in  trustworthi- 
ness, so  has  the  former  shrunk,  grown  vague  and  question- 
able ;  as  the  one  has  more  and  more  filled  the  sphere  of  ac- 
tion, so  has  the  other  retreated  into  the  region  of  meditation, 
or  vanished  behind  the  screen  of  mere  verbal  recognition. 

Whether  this  difference  of  the  fortunes  of  Naturalism  and 
of  Snpernaturalism  is  an  indication  of  the  progress,  or  of  the 
regress,  of  humanity ;  of  a  fall  from,  or  an  advance  toward, 
the  higher  life ;  is  a  matter  of  opinion.  The  point  to  which 
I  wish  to  direct  attention  is  that  the  difference  exists  and  is 
making  itself  felt.  Men  are  growing  to  be  seriously  alive  to 
the  fact  that  the  historical  evolution  of  humanity,  which  is 
generally,  and  I  venture  to  think  not  unreasonably,  regarded 
as  progress,  has  been,  and  is  being,  accompanied  by  a  co- 
ordinate elimination  of  the  supernatural  from  its  originally 
large  occupation  of  men's  thoughts.  The  question — How  far 
is  this  process  to  go  ? — is,  in  my  apprehension,  the  Contro- 
verted Question  of  our  time. 

Controversy  on  this  matter — prolonged,  bitter,  and  fought 
out  with  the  weapons  of  the  flesh,  as  well  as  with  those  of  the 
spirit — is  no  new  thing  to  Englishmen.  We  have  been  more 
or  less  occupied  with  it  these  five  hundred  years.  And,  dur- 
ing that  time,  we  have  made  attempts  to  establish  a  modus 
vivendi  between  the  antagonists,  some  of  which  have  had  a 
world-wide  influence;  though,  unfortunately,  none  have 
proved  universally  and  permanently  satisfactory. 

In  the  fourteenth  century,  the  controverted  question 
among  us  was,  whether  certain  portions  of  the  Supernatural- 
ism  of  mediaeval  Christianity  were  well-founded.  John  Wic- 
liff  proposed  a  solution  of  the  problem  which,  in  the  course 
of  the  following  two  hundred  years,  acquired  wide  popularity 


6  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  vast  historical  importance :  Lollards,  Hussites,  Luther- 
ans, Calvinists,  Zwinglians,  Socinians,  and  Anabaptists,  what- 
ever their  disagreements,  concurred  in  the  proposal  to  reduce 
the  Supernaturalism  of  Christianity  within  the  limits  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Scriptures.  None  of  the  chiefs  of  Protestant- 
ism called  in  question  either  the  supernatural  origin  and  in- 
fallible authority  of  the  Bible,  or  the  exactitude  of  the  ac- 
count of  the  supernatural  world  given  in  its  pages.  In  fact, 
they  could  not  afford  to  entertain  any  doubt  about  these 
points,  since  the  infallible  Bible  was  the  fulcrum  of  the  lever 
with  which  they  were  endeavoring  to  upset  the  Chair  of  St. 
Peter.  The  "  freedom  of  private  judgment "  which  they  pro- 
claimed, meant  no  more,  in  practice,  than  permission  to  them- 
selves to  make  free  with  the  public  judgment  of  the  Eoman 
Church,  in  respect  of  the  canon  and  of  the  meaning  to  be 
attached  to  the  words  of  the  canonical  books.  Private  judg- 
ment— that  is  to  say,  reason — was  (theoretically,  at  any  rate) 
at  liberty  to  decide  what  books  were  and  what  were  not  to 
take  the  rank  of  "  Scripture  " ;  and  to  determine  the  sense  of 
any  passage  in  such  books.  But  this  sense,  once  ascertained 
to  the  mind  of  the  sectary,  was  to  be  taken  for  pure  truth — 
for  the  very  word  of  God.  The  controversial  efficiency  of  the 
principle  of  biblical  infallibility  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  con- 
servative adversaries  of  the  Eeformers  were  not  in  a  position 
to  contravene  it  without  entangling  themselves  in  serious 
difficulties ;  while,  since  both  Papists  and  Protestants  agreed 
in  taking  efficient  measures  to  stop  the  mouths  of  any  more 
radical  critics,  these  did  not  count. 

The  impotence  of  their  adversaries,  however,  did  not  re- 
move the  inherent  weakness  of  the  position  of  the  Protestants. 
The  dogma  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible  is  no  more  self- 
evident  than  is  that  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope.  If  the 
former  is  held  by  "  faith,"  then  the  latter  may  be.  If  the 
latter  is  to  be  accepted,  or  rejected,  by  private  judgment,  why 
not  the  former  ?  Even  if  the  Bible  could  be  proved  anywhere 
to  assert  its  own  infallibility,  the  value  of  that  self-assertion 


PROLOGUE.  y 

to  those  who  dispute  the  point  is  not  obvious.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible  was  rested  on  that  of  a 
"  primitive  Church,"  the  admission  that  the  "  Church  "  was 
formerly  infallible  was  awkward  in  the  extreme  for  those  who 
denied  its  present  infallibility.  Moreover,  no  sooner  was  the 
Protestant  principle  applied  to  practice,  than  it  became  evi- 
dent that  even  an  infallible  text,  when  manipulated  by  pri- 
vate judgment,  will  impartially  countenance  contradictory 
deductions;  and  furnish  forth  creeds  and  confessions  as 
diverse  as  the  quality  and  the  information  of  the  intellects 
which  exercise,  and  the  prejudices  and  passions  which  sway, 
such  judgments.  Every  sect,  confident  in  the  derivative  in- 
fallibility of  its  wire-drawing  of  infallible  materials,  was  ready 
to  supply  its  contingent  of  martyrs ;  and  to  enable  history, 
once  more,  to  illustrate  the  truth,  that  steadfastness  under 
persecution  says  much  for  the  sincerity  and  still  more  for  the 
tenacity,  of  the  believer,  but  very  little  for  the  objective  truth 
of  that  which  he  believes.  No  martyrs  have  sealed  their  faith 
with  their  blood  more  steadfastly  than  the  Anabaptists. 

Last,  but  not  least,  the  Protestant  principle  contained 
within  itself  the  germs  of  the  destruction  of  the  finality,  which 
the  Lutheran,  Calvinistic,  and  other  Protestant  Churches 
fondly  imagined  they  had  reached.  Since  their  creeds  were 
professedly  based  on  the  canonical  Scriptures,  it  followed 
that,  in  the  long  run,  whoso  settled  the  canon  defined  the 
creed.  If  the  private  judgment  of  Luther  might  legitimately 
conclude  that  the  epistle  of  James  was  contemptible,  while 
the  epistles  of  Paul  contained  the  very  essence  of  Christianity, 
it  must  be  permissible  for  some  other  private  judgment,  on 
as  good  or  as  bad  grounds,  to  reverse  these  conclusions  ;  the 
critical  process  which  excluded  the  Apocrypha  could  not  be 
barred,  at  any  rate  by  people  who  rejected  the  authority 
of  the  Church,  from  extending  its  operations  to  Daniel,  the 
Canticles,  and  Ecclesiastes ;  nor,  having  got  so  far,  was  it 
easy  to  allege  any  good  ground  for  staying  the  further  prog- 
ress of  criticism.     In  fact,  the  logical  development  of  Prot- 


8  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

estantism  could  not  fail  to  lay  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures 
at  the  feet  of  Eeason ;  and,  in  the  hands  of  latitudinarian 
and  rationalistic  theologians,  the  despotism  of  the  Bible  was 
rapidly  converted  into  an  extremely  limited  monarchy. 
Treated  with  as  much  respect  as  ever,  the  sphere  of  its  practi- 
cal authority  was  minimized ;  and  its  decrees  were  valid  only 
so  far  as  they  were  countersigned  by  common  sense,  the  re- 
sponsible minister. 

The  champions  of  Protestantism  are  much  given  to  glorify 
the  Keformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  as  the  emancipa- 
tion of  Eeason ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  if  their  contention 
has  any  solid  ground  ;  while  there  is  a  good  deal  of  evidence 
to  show,  that  aspirations  after  intellectual  freedom  had  noth- 
ing whatever  to  do  with  the  movement.  Dante,  who  struck 
the  Papacy  as  hard  blows  as  Wicliff;  Wicliff  himself  and 
Luther  himself,  when  they  began  their  work ;  were  far  enough 
from  any  intention  of  meddling  with  even  the  most  irra- 
tional of  the  dogmas  of  mediaeval  Supernaturalism.  From 
Wicliff  to  Socinus,  or  even  to  Miinzer,  Rothmann,  and  John 
of  Leyden,  I  fail  to  find  a  trace  of  any  desire  to  set  reason 
free.  The  most  that  can  be  discovered  is  a  proposal  to  change 
masters.  From  being  the  slave  of  the  Papacy  the  intellect  was 
to  become  the  serf  of  the  Bible ;  or,  to  speak  more  accurately, 
of  somebody's  interpretation  of  the  Bible,  which,  rapidly 
shifting  its  attitude  from  the  humility  of  a  private  judgment 
to  the  arrogant  Caesaro-papistry  of  a  state-enforced  creed,  had 
no  more  hesitation  about  forcibly  extinguishing  opponent 
private  judgments  and  judges,  than  had  the  old-fashioned 
Pontiff-papistry. 

It  was  the  iniquities,  and  not  the  irrationalities,  of  the 
Papal  system  that  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  revolt  of  the  laity ; 
which  was,  essentially,  an  attempt  to  shake  off  the  intolerable 
burden  of  certain  practical  deductions  from  a  Supernatural- 
ism in  which  everybody,  in  principle,  acquiesced.  What  was 
the  gain  to  intellectual  freedom  of  abolishing  transubstantia- 
tion,  image  worship,  indulgences,  ecclesiastical  infallibility ; 


PROLOGUE.  9 

if  consubstantiation,  real-unreal  presence  mystifications,  the 
bibliolatry,  the  "  inner-light "  pretensions,  and  the  demon- 
ology,  which  are  fruits  of  the  same  supernaturalistic  tree,  re- 
mained in  enjoyment  of  the  spiritual  and  temporal  support 
of  a  new  infallibility  ?  One  does  not  free  a  prisoner  by  merely 
scraping  away  the  rust  from  his  shackles. 

It  will  be  asked,  perhaps,  was  not  the  Reformation  one  of 
the  products  of  that  great  outbreak  of  many-sided  free  men- 
tal activity  included  under  the  general  head  of  the  Renas- 
cence ?  Melanchthon,  Ulrich  von  Hutten,  Beza,  were  they 
not  all  humanists?  "Was  not  the  arch-humanist,  Erasmus, 
fautor-in-chief  of  the  Reformation,  until  he  got  frightened 
and  basely  deserted  it  ? 

From  the  language  of  Protestant  historians,  it  would  seem 
that  they  often  forget  that  Reformation  and  Protestantism 
are  by  no  means  convertible  terms.  There  were  plenty  of 
sincere  and  indeed  zealous  reformers,  before,  during,  and 
after  the  birth  and  growth  of  Protestantism,  who  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  Assuredly,  the  rejuvenescence  of  sci- 
ence and  of  art ;  the  widening  of  the  field  of  Nature  by  geo- 
graphical and  astronomical  discovery ;  the  revelation  of  the 
noble  ideals  of  antique  literature  by  the  revival  of  classical 
learning  ;  the  stir  of  thought,  throughout  all  classes  of  society, 
by  the  printers'  work,  loosened  traditional  bonds  and  weak- 
ened the  hold  of  mediaeval  Supernaturalism.  In  the  interests 
of  liberal  culture  and  of  national  welfare,  the  humanists  were 
eager  to  lend  a  hand  to  anything  which  tended  to  the  dis- 
comfiture of  their  sworn  enemies,  the  monks,  and  they  will- 
ingly supported  every  movement  in  the  direction*  of  weaken- 
ing ecclesiastical  interference  with  civil  life.  But  the  bond 
of  a  common  enemy  was  the  only  real  tie  between  the  hu- 
manist and  the  protestant ;  their  alliance  was  bound  to  be  of 
short  duration,  and,  sooner  or  later,  to  be  replaced  by  inter- 
necine warfare.  The  goal  of  the  humanists,  whether  they 
were  aware  of  it  or  not,  was  the  attainment  of  the  complete 
intellectual  freedom  of  the  antique  philosopher,  than  which 


10  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

nothing  could  be  more  abhorrent  to  a  Luther,  a  Calvin,  a 
Beza,  or  a  Zwingli. 

The  key  to  the  comprehension  of  the  conduct  of  Erasmus, 
seems  to  me  to  lie  in  the  clear  apprehension  of  this  fact. 
That  he  was  a  man  of  many  weaknesses  may  be  true ;  in  fact, 
he  was  quite  aware  of  them  and  professed  himself  no  hero. 
But  he  never  deserted  that  reformatory  movement  which  he 
originally  contemplated;  and  it  was  impossible  he  should 
have  deserted  the  specifically  Protestant  reformation  in  which 
he  never  took  part.  He  was  essentially  a  theological  whig,  to 
whom  radicalism  was  as  hateful  as  it  is  to  all  whigs ;  or,  to 
borrow  a  still  more  appropriate  comparison  from  modern 
times,  a  broad  churchman  who  refused  to  enlist  with  either 
the  High  Church  or  the  Low  Church  zealots,  and  paid  the 
penalty  of  being  called  coward,  time-server  and  traitor,  by 
both.  Yet  really  there  is  a  good  deal  in  his  pathetic  remon- 
strance that  he  does  not  see  why  he  is  bound  to  become  a 
martyr  for  that  in  which  he  does  not  believe  ;  and  a  fair  con- 
sideration of  the  circumstances  and  the  consequences  of  the 
Protestant  reformation  seems  to  me  to  go  a  long  way  toward 
justifying  the  course  he  adopted. 

Few  men  had  better  means  of  being  acquainted  with  the 
condition  of  Europe;  none  could  be  more  competent  to 
gauge  the  intellectual  shallowness  and  self-contradiction  of 
the  protestant  criticism  of  catholic  doctrine ;  and  to  estimate, 
at  its  proper  value,  the  fond  imagination  that  the  waters  let 
out  by  the  Renascence  would  come  to  rest  amid  the  blind 
alleys  of  the  new  ecclesiasticism.  The  bastard,  whilom  poor 
student  and  monk,  become  the  familiar  of  bishops  and  princes, 
at  home  in  all  grades  of  society,  could  not  fail  to  be  aware  of 
the  gravity  of  the  social  position,  of  the  dangers  imminent 
from  the  profligacy  and  indifference  of  the  ruling  classes,  no 
less  than  from  the  anarchical  tendencies  of  the  people  who 
groaned  under  their  oppression.  The  wanderer  who  had 
lived  in  Germany,  in  France,  in  England,  in  Italy,  and  who 
counted  many  of  the  best  and  most  influential  men  in  each 


PROLOGUE.  11 

country  among  his  friends,  was  not  likely  to  estimate  wrongly 
the  enormous  forces  which  were  still  at  the  command  of  the 
Papacy.  Bad  as  the  churchmen  might  be,  the  statesmen 
were  worse  ;  and  a  person  of  far  more  sanguine  temperament 
than  Erasmus  might  have  seen  no  hope  for  the  future,  except 
in  gradually  freeing  the  ubiquitous  organization  of  the 
Church  from  the  corruptions  which  alone,  as  he  imagined, 
prevented  it  from  being  as  beneficent  as  it  was  powerful. 
The  broad  tolerance  of  the  scholar  and  man  of  the  world 
might  well  be  revolted  by  the  ruffianism,  however  genial,  of 
one  great  light  of  Protestantism,  and  the  narrow  fanaticism, 
however  learned  and  logical,  of  others;  and  to  a  cautious 
thinker,  by  whom,  whatever  his  shortcomings,  the  ethical 
ideal  of  the  Christian  evangel  was  sincerely  prized,  it  really 
was  a  fair  question,  whether  it  was  worth  while  to  bring 
about  a  political  and  social  deluge,  the  end  of  which  no 
mortal  could  foresee,  for  the  purpose  of  setting  up  Lutheran, 
Zwinglian,  and  other  Peterkins,  in  the  place  of  the  actual 
claimant  to  the  reversion  of  the  spiritual  wealth  of  the  Gali- 
lean fisherman. 

Let  us  suppose  that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Lutheran  and 
Zwinglian  movement,  a  vision  of  its  immediate  consequences 
had  been  granted  to  Erasmus ;  imagine  that  to  the  specter  of 
the  fierce  outbreak  of  Anabaptist  communism,  which  opened 
the  apocalypse,  had  succeeded,  in  shadowy  procession,  the 
reign  of  terror  and  of  spoliation  in  England,  with  the  judi- 
cial murders  of  his  friends,  More  and  Fisher;  the  bitter 
tyranny  of  evangelistic  clericalism  in  Geneva  and  in  Scot- 
land ;  the  long  agony  of  religious  wars,  persecutions,  and 
massacres,  which  devastated  France  and  reduced  Germany 
almost  to  savagery ;  finishing  with  the  spectacle  of  Lutheran- 
ism  in  its  native  country  sunk  into  mere  dead  Erastian 
formalism,  before  it  was  a  century  old ;  while  Jesuitry 
triumphed  over  Protestantism  in  three  fourths  of  Europe, 
bringing  in  its  train  a  recrudescence  of  all  the  corruptions 
Erasmus  and  his  friends  sought  to  abolish;  might  not  he 


12  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

have  quite  honestly  thought  this  a  somewhat  too  heavy  price 
to  pay  for  Protestantism ;  more  especially,  since  no  one  was 
in  a  better  position  than  himself  to  know  how  little  the  dog- 
matic foundation  of  the  new  confessions  was  able  to  bear  the 
light  which  the  inevitable  progress  of  humanistic  criticism 
would  throw  upon  them  ?  As  the  wiser  of  his  contempora- 
ries saw,  Erasmus  was,  at  heart,  neither  Protestant  nor  Pa- 
pist, but  an  "  Independent  Christian  " ;  and,  as  the  wiser  of 
his  modern  biographers  have  discerned,  he  was  the  precursor 
not  of  sixteenth  century  reform,  but  of  eighteenth  century 
"  enlightenment  " ;  a  sort  of  broad- church  Voltaire,  who  held 
by  his  "  Independent  Christianity  "  as  stoutly  as  Voltaire  by 
his  Deism. 

In  fact,  the  stream  of  the  Renascence  which  bore  Eras- 
mus along,  left  Protestantism  stranded  amid  the  mudbanks 
of  its  articles  and  creeds ;  while  its  true  course  became  visible 
to  all  men,  two  centuries  later.  By  this  time,  those  in  whom 
the  movement  of  the  Renascence  was  incarnate  became  aware 
what  spirit  they  were  of ;  and  they  attacked  Supernatural- 
ism  in  its  Biblical  stronghold,  defended  by  Protestants  and 
Romanists  with  equal  zeal.  In  the  eyes  of  the  "  Patriarch," 
Ultramontanism,  Jansenism,  and  Calvinism  were  merely 
three  persons  of  the  one  "  Infame  "  which  it  was  the  object 
of  his  life  to  crush.  If  he  hated  one  more  than  another,  it 
was  probably  the  last ;  while  D'Holbach,  and  the  extreme  left 
of  the  free-thinking  host,  were  disposed  to  show  no  more 
mercy  to  Deism  and  Pantheism. 

The  skeptical  insurrection  of  the  eighteenth  century 
made  a  terrific  noise  and  frightened  not  a  few  worthy  people 
out  of  their  wits ;  but  cool  judges  might  have  foreseen,  at  the 
outset,  that  the  efforts  of  the  later  rebels  were  no  more  likely 
than  those  of  the  earlier,  to  furnish  permanent  resting-places 
for  the  spirit  of  scientific  inquiry.  However  worthy  of  ad- 
miration may  be  the  acuteness,  the  common  sense,  the  wit, 
the  broad  humanity,  which  abound  in  the  writings  of  the 
best  of  the  free-thinkers  ;  there  is  rarely  much  to  be  said  for 


PKOLOGUE.  13 

their  work  as  an  example  of  the  adequate  treatment  of 
a  grave  and  difficult  investigation.  I  do  not  think  any  im- 
partial judge  will  assert  that,  from  this  point  of  view,  they 
are  much  better  than  their  adversaries.  It  must  be  admitted 
that  they  share  to  the  full  the  fatal  weakness  of  a  priori 
philosophizing,  no  less  than  the  moral  frivolity  common  to 
their  age ;  while  a  singular  want  of  appreciation  of  history, 
as  the  record  of  the  moral  and  social  evolution  of  the  human 
race,  permitted  them  to  resort  to  preposterous  theories  of  im- 
posture, in  order  to  account  for  the  religious  phenomena 
which  are  natural  products  of  that  evolution. 

For  the  most  part,  the  Eomanist  and  Protestant  adversa- 
ries of  the  free-thinkers  met  them  with  arguments  no  better 
than  their  own ;  and  with  vituperation,  so  far  inferior  that  it 
lacked  the  wit.  But  one  great  Christian  apologist  fairly  capt- 
ured the  guns  of  the  free-thinking  array,  and  turned  their 
batteries  upon  themselves.  Speculative  "infidelity"  of  the 
eighteenth  century  type  was  mortally  wounded  by  the  Anal- 
ogy ;  while  the  progress  of  the  historical  and  psychological 
sciences  brought  to  light  the  important  part  played  by  the 
mythopoeic  faculty ;  and,  by  demonstrating  the  extreme  readi- 
ness of  men  to  impose  upon  themselves,  rendered  the  calling 
in  of  sacerdotal  co-operation,  in  most  cases,  a  superfluity. 

Again,  as  in  the  fourteenth  and  the  sixteenth  centuries, 
social  and  political  influences  came  into  play.  The  free- 
thinking  philosopJies,  who  objected  to  Eousseau's  sentimental 
religiosity  almost  as  much  as  they  did  to  L'Infdme,  were 
credited  with  the  responsibility  for  all  the  evil  deeds  of  Eous- 
seau's Jacobin  disciples,  with  about  as  much  justification  as 
Wicliif  was  held  responsible  for  the  Peasants'  revolt,  or  Luther 
for  the  Bauern-hrieg.  In  England,  though  our  ancien  regime 
was  not  altogether  lovely,  the  social  edifice  was  never  in  such 
a  bad  way  as  in  France ;  it  was  still  capable  of  being  repaired  ; 
and  our  forefathers,  very  wisely,  preferred  to  wait  until  that 
operation  could  be  safely  performed,  rather  than  pull  it  all 
down  about  their  ears,  in  order  to  build  a  philosophically 


14  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

planned  house  on  brand-new  speculative  foundations.  Under 
these  circumstances,  it  is  not  wonderful  that,  in  this  country, 
practical  men  preferred  the  gospel  of  "Wesley  and  Whitfield 
to  that  of  Jean  Jacques ;  while  enough  of  the  old  leaven  of 
Puritanism  remained  to  insure  the  favor  and  support  of  a 
large  number  of  religious  men  to  a  revival  of  evangelical 
supernaturalism.  Thus,  by  degrees,  the  free-thinking,  or  the 
indifference,  prevalent  among  us  in  the  first  half  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  was  replaced  by  a  strong  supernaturalistic  re- 
action, which  submerged  the  work  of  the  free-thinkers ;  and 
even  seemed,  for  a  time,  to  have  arrested  the  naturalistic 
movement  of  which  that  work  was  an  imperfect  indication. 
Yet,  like  Lollardry,  four  centuries  earlier,  free-thought  merely 
took  to  running  underground,  safe,  sooner  or  later,  to  return 
to  the  surface. 

My  memory,  unfortunately,  carries  me  back  to  the  fourth 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  evangelical  flood 
had  a  little  abated  and  the  tops  of  certain  mountains  were 
soon  to  appear,  chiefly  in  the  neighborhood  of  Oxford ;  but 
when,  nevertheless,  bibliolatry  was  rampant;  when  church 
and  chapel  alike  proclaimed,  as  the  oracles  of  God,  the  crude 
assumptions  of  the  worst  informed  and,  in  natural  sequence, 
the  most  presumptuously  bigoted,  of  all  theological  schools. 

In  accordance  with  promises  made  on  my  behalf,  but  cer- 
tainly without  my  authorization,  I  was  very  early  taken  to 
hear  "  sermons  in  the  vulgar  tongue."  And  vulgar  enough 
often  was  the  tongue  in  which  some  preacher,  ignorant  alike 
of  literature,  of  history,  of  science,  and  even  of  theology,  out- 
side that  patronized  by  his  own  narrow  school,  poured  forth, 
from  the  safe  intrenchment  of  the  pulpit,  invectives  against 
those  who  deviated  from  his  notion  of  orthodoxy.  From 
dark  allusions  to  "  skeptics  "  and  "  infidels,"  I  became  aware 
of  the  existence  of  people  who  trusted  in  carnal  reason ;  who 
audaciously  doubted  that  the  world  was  made  in  six  natural 
days,  or  that  the  deluge  was  universal ;  perhaps  even  went  so 


PROLOGUE.  15 

far  as  to  question  the  literal  accuracy  of  the  story  of  Eve's 
temptation,  or  of  Balaam's  ass ;  and,  from  the  horror  of  the 
tones  in  which  they  were  mentioned,  I  should  have  been  justi- 
fied in  drawing  the  conclusion  that  these  rash  men  belonged 
to  the  criminal  classes.  At  the  same  time,  those  who  were 
more  directly  responsible  for  providing  me  with  the  knowl- 
edge essential  to  the  right  guidance  of  life  (and  who  sincerely 
desired  to  do  so),  imagined  they  were  discharging  that  most 
sacred  duty  by  impressing  upon  my  childish  mind  the  neces- 
sity, on  pain  of  reprobation  in  this  world  and  damnation  in 
the  next,  of  accepting,  in  the  strict  and  literal  sense,  every 
statement  contained  in  the  protestant  Bible.  I  was  told  to 
believe,  and  I  did  believe,  that  doubt  about  any  of  them  was 
a  sin,  not  less  reprehensible  than  a  moral  delict.  I  suppose 
that,  out  of  a  thousand  of  my  contemporaries,  nine  hundred, 
at  least,  had  their  minds  systematically  warped  and  poisoned, 
in  the  name  of  the  God  of  truth,  by  like  discipline.  I  am 
sure  that,  even  a  score  of  years  later,  those  who  ventured  to 
question  the  exact  historical  accuracy  of  any  part  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  a  fortiori  of  the  Gospels,  had  to  expect  a 
pitiless  shower  of  verbal  missiles,  to  say  nothing  of  the  other 
disagreeable  consequences  which  visit  those  who,  in  any  way, 
run  counter  to  that  chaos  of  prejudices  called  public  opinion. 
My  recollections  of  this  time  have  recently  been  revived 
by  the  perusal  of  a  remarkable  document,*  signed  by  as  many 
as  thirty-eight  out  of  the  twenty  odd  thousand  clergymen  of 
the  Established  Church.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  signa- 
taries  are  officially  accredited  spokesmen  of  the  ecclesiastical 
corporation  to  which  they  belong ;  but  I  feel  bound  to  take 
their  word  for  it,  that  they  are  "  stewards  of  the  Lord,  who 
have  received  the  Holy  Ghost,"  and,  therefore,  to  accept  this 
memorial  as  evidence  that,  though  the  Evangelicism  of  my 
early  days  may  be  deposed  from  its  place  of  power,  though 

*  Declaration  on  the  Truth  of  Holy  Scriptures.     The  Times,  18th 
December,  1891. 


16  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

so  many  of  the  colleagues  of  the  thirty- eight  even  repudiate 
the  title  of  Protestants,  yet  the  green  bay  tree  of  bibliolatry 
nourishes  as  it  did  sixty  years  ago.  And,  as  in  those  good 
old  times,  whoso  refuses  to  offer  incense  to  the  idol  is  held  to 
be  guilty  of  "  a  dishonor  to  God,"  imperiling  his  salvation. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  perspicacity  of  the  memorialists 
that  they  discern  the  real  nature  of  the  Controverted  Ques- 
tion of  the  age.  They  are  awake  to  the  unquestionable  fact 
that,  if  Scripture  has  been  discovered  "  not  to  be  worthy  of 
unquestioning  belief,"  faith  "  in  the  supernatural  itself  "  is, 
so  far,  undermined.  And  I  may  congratulate  myself  upon 
such  weighty  confirmation  of  an  opinion  in  which  I  have  had 
the  fortune  to  anticipate  them.  But  whether  it  is  more  to 
the  credit  of  the  courage,  than  to  the  intelligence,  of  the 
thirty-eight  that  they  should  go  on  to  proclaim  that  the  ca- 
nonical scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  "  declare 
incontrovertibly  the  actual  historical  truth  in  all  records, 
both  of  past  events  and  of  the  delivery  of  predictions  to  be 
thereafter  fulfilled,"  must  be  left  to  the  coming  generation 
to  decide. 

The  interest  which  attaches  to  this  singular  document 
will,  I  think,  be  based  by  most  thinking  men,  not  upon  what 
it  is,  but  upon  that  of  which  it  is  a  sign.  It  is  an  open  se- 
cret, that  the  memorial  is  put  forth  as  a  counterblast  to  a 
manifestation  of  opinion  of  a  contrary  character,  on  the  part 
of  certain  members  of  the  same  ecclesiastical  body,  who  there- 
fore have,  as  I  suppose,  an  equal  right  to  declare  themselves 
"stewards  of  the  Lord  and  recipients  of  the  Holy  Ghost." 
In  fact,  the  stream  of  tendency  toward  Naturalism,  the 
course  of  which  I  have  briefly  traced,  has,  of  late  years,  flowed 
so  strongly,  that  even  the  Churches  have  begun,  I  dare  not 
say  to  drift,  but,  at  any  rate,  to  swing  at  their  moorings. 
Within  the  pale  of  the  Anglican  establishment,  I  venture  to 
doubt,  whether,  at  this  moment,  there  are  as  many  thorough- 
going defenders  of  "  plenary  inspiration  "  as  there  were  timid 
questioners  of  that  doctrine,  half  a  century  ago.     Comment- 


PROLOGUE.  17 

aries,  sanctioned  by  the  highest  authority,  give  up  the  "  act- 
ual historical  truth  "  of  the  cosmogonical  and  diluvial  narra- 
tives. University  professors  of  deservedly  high  repute  accept 
the  critical  decision  that  the  Hexateuch  is  a  compilation,  in 
which  the  share  of  Moses,  either  as  author  or  as  editor,  is  not 
quite  so  clearly  demonstrable  as  it  might  be ;  highly  placed 
Divines  tell  us  that  the  pre-Abrahamic  Scripture  narratives 
may  be  ignored ;  that  the  book  of  Daniel  may  be  regarded  as 
a  patriotic  romance  of  the  second  century  b.  c.  ;  that  the 
words  of  the  writer  of  the  fourth  Gospel  are  not  always  to  be 
distinguished  from  those  which  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
Jesus.  Conservative,  but  conscientious,  revisers  decide  that 
whole  passages,  some  of  dogmatic  and  some  of  ethical  impor- 
tance, are  interpolations.  An  uneasy  sense  of  the  weakness  of 
the  dogma  of  biblical  infallibility  seems  to  be  at  the  bottom 
of  a  prevailing  tendency  once  more  to  substitute  the  author- 
ity of  the  "  Church  "  for  that  of  the  Bible.  In  my  old  age, 
it  has  happened  to  me  to  be  taken  to  task  for  regarding 
Christianity  as  a  "  religion  of  a  book  "  as  gravely  as,  in  my 
youth,  I  should  have  been  reprehended  for  doubting  that 
proposition.  It  is  a  no  less  interesting  symptom  that  the 
state  Church  seems  more  and  more  anxious  to  repudiate  all 
complicity  with  the  principles  of  the  Protestant  Eeformation 
and  to  call  itself  "  Anglo- Catholic."  Inspiration,  deprived  of 
its  old  intelligible  sense,  is  watered  down  into  a  mystifica- 
tion. The  Scriptures  are,  indeed,  inspired ;  but  they  contain 
a  wholly  undefined  and  indefinable  "  human  element " ;  and 
this  unfortunate  intruder  is  converted  into  a  sort  of  biblical 
whipping  boy.  Whatsoever  scientific  investigation,  historical 
or  physical,  proves  to  be  erroneous,  the  "  human  element " 
bears  the  blame ;  while  the  divine  inspiration  of  such  state- 
ments, as  by  their  nature  are  out  of  reach  of  proof  or  dis- 
proof, is  still  asserted  with  all  the  vigor  inspired  by  conscious 
safety  from  attack.  Though  the  proposal  to  treat  the  Bible 
"  like  any  other  book  "  which  caused  so  much  scandal,  forty 
years  ago,  may  not  yet  be  generally  accepted,  and  though 
2 


18  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Bishop  Colenso's  criticisms  may  still  lie,  formally,  under  ec- 
clesiastical ban,  yet  the  Church  has  not  wholly  turned  a  deaf 
ear  to  the  voice  of  the  scientific  tempter ;  and  many  a  coy  di- 
vine, while  ''crying  I  will  ne'er  consent,"  has  consented  to 
the  proposals  of  that  scientific  criticism  which  the  memorial- 
ists renounce  and  denounce. 

A  humble  layman,  to  whom  it  would  seem  the  height  of 
presumption  to  assume  even  the  unconsidered  dignity  of  a 
"  steward  of  science,"  may  well  find  this  conflict  of  apparently 
equal  ecclesiastical  authorities  perplexing — suggestive,  indeed, 
of  the  wisdom  of  postponing  attention  to  either,  until  the 
question  of  precedence  between  them  is  settled.  And  this 
course  will  probably  appear  the  more  advisable,  the  more 
closely  the  fundamental  position  of  the  memorialists  is  ex- 
amined. 

"  No  opinion  of  the  fact  or  form  of  Divine  Revelation, 
founded  on  literary  criticism  [and  I  suppose  I  may  add  his- 
torical, or  physical,  criticism]  of  the  Scriptures  themselves, 
can  be  admitted  to  interfere  with  the  traditionary  testimony 
of  the  Church,  when  that  has  been  once  ascertained  and  veri- 
fied by  appeal  to  antiquity."  * 

Grant  that  it  is  "  the  traditionary  testimony  of  the 
Church  "  which  guarantees  the  canonicity  of  each  and  all  of 
the  books  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  Grant  also  that 
canonicity  means  infallibility;  yet,  according  to  the  thirty- 
eight,  this  "  traditionary  testimony  "  has  to  be  "  ascertained 
and  verified  by  appeal  to  antiquity."  But  "  ascertainment 
and  verification "  are  purely  intellectual  processes,  which 
must  be  conducted  according  to  the  strict  rules  of  scientific 
investigation,  or  be  self-convicted  of  worthlessness.  More- 
over, before  we  can  set  about  the  appeal  to  "  antiquity,"  the 
exact  sense  of  that  usefully  vague  term  must  be  defined  by 
similar  means.  "  Antiquity "  may  include  any  number  of 
centuries,  great  or  small;   and  whether  "antiquity"   is  to 

*  Declaration,  Article  10. 


PROLOGUE.  19 

comprise  the  Council  of  Trent,  or  to  stop  a  little  beyond  that 
of  Nicaea,  or  to  come  to  an  end  in  the  time  of  Irenaeus,  or  in 
that  of  Justin  Martyr,  are  knotty  questions  which  can  be  de- 
cided, if  at  all,  only  by  those  critical  methods  which  the  sig- 
nataries  treat  so  cavalierly.  And  yet  the  decision  of  these 
questions  is  fundamental,  for  as  the  limits  of  the  canonical 
scriptures  vary,  so  may  the  dogmas  deduced  from  them  re- 
quire modification.  Christianity  is  one  thing,  if  the  fourth 
Gospel,  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  the  pastoral  Epistles,  and 
the  Apocalypse  are  canonical  and  (by  the  hypothesis)  infalli- 
bly true ;  and  another  thing,  if  they  are  not.  As  I  have  al- 
ready said,  whoso  defines  the  canon  defines  the  creed. 

Now  it  is  quite  certain  with  respect  to  some  of  these 
books,  such  as  the  Apocalypse  and  the  Epistle  to  the  He- 
brews, that  the  Eastern  and  the  Western  Church  differed  in 
opinion  for  centuries ;  and  yet  neither  the  one  branch,  nor 
the  other,  can  have  considered  its  judgment  infallible,  since 
they  eventually  agreed  to  a  transaction,  by  which  each  gave 
up  its  objection  to  the  book  patronized  by  the  other.  More- 
over, the  "  fathers  "  argue  (in  a  more  or  less  rational  manner) 
about  the  canonicity  of  this  or  that  book,  and  are  by  no 
means  above  producing  evidence,  internal  and  external,  in 
favor  of  the  opinions  they  advocate.  In  fact,  imperfect  as 
their  conceptions  of  scientific  method  may  be,  they  not  un- 
frequently  used  it  to  the  best  of  their  ability.  Thus  it  would 
appear  that  though  science,  like  Nature,  may  be  driven  out 
with  a  fork,  ecclesiastical  or  other,  yet  she  surely  comes  back 
again.  The  appeal  to  "  antiquity  "  is,  in  fact,  an  appeal  to 
science,  first,  to  define  what  antiquity  is  ;  secondly,  to  deter- 
mine what  "antiquity,"  so  defined,  says  about  canonicity; 
thirdly,  to  prove  that  canonicity  means  infallibility.  And 
when  science,  largely  in  the  shape  of  the  abhorred  "  criti- 
cism," has  done  this,  and  has  shown  that  "  antiquity  "  used 
her  own  methods,  however  clumsily  and  imperfectly,  she 
naturally  turns  round  upon  the  appealers  to  "  antiquity,"  and 
demands  that  they  should  show  cause  why,  in  these  days,  sci- 


20  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

ence  should  not  resume  the  work  the  ancients  did  so  imper- 
fectly, and  carry  it  out  efficiently. 

But  no  such  cause  can  be  shown.  If  "  antiquity  "  per- 
mitted Eusebius,  Origen,  Tertullian,  Irenaeus,  to  argue  for 
the  reception  of  this  book  into  the  canon  and  the  rejection  of 
that,  upon  rational  grounds,  "  antiquity  "  admitted  the  whole 
principle  of  modern  criticism.  If  Irenseus  produces  ridicu- 
lous reasons  for  limiting  the  Gospels  to  four,  it  was  open  to 
any  one  else  to  produce  good  reasons  (if  he  had  them)  for 
cutting  them  down  to  three,  or  increasing  them  to  five.  If 
the  Eastern  branch  of  the  Church  had  a  right  to  reject  the 
Apocalypse  and  accept  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  the 
Western  an  equal  right  to  accept  the  Apocalypse  and  reject 
the  Epistle,  down  to  the  fourth  century,  any  other  branch 
would  have  an  equal  right,  on  cause  shown,  to  reject  both, 
or,  as  the  Catholic  Church  afterward  actually  did,  to  accept 
both. 

Thus  I  can  not  but  think  that  the  thirty-eight  are  hoist 
with  their  own  petard.  Their  "  appeal  to  antiquity  "  turns 
out  to  be  nothing  but  a  round-about  way  of  appealing  to  the 
tribunal,  the  jurisdiction  of  which  they  affect  to  deny.  Hav- 
ing rested  the  world  of  Christian  supernaturalism  on  the  ele- 
phant of  biblical  infallibility,  and  furnished  the  elephant 
with  standing  ground  on  the  tortoise  of  "  antiquity,"  they, 
like  their  famous  Hindoo  analogue,  have  been  content  to  look 
no  further;  and  have  thereby  been  spared  the  horror  of  dis- 
covering that  the  tortoise  rests  on  a  grievously  fragile  con-' 
struction,  to  a  great  extent  the  work  of  that  very  intellectual 
operation  which  they  anathematize  and  repudiate. 

Moreover,  there  is  another  point  to  be  considered.  It  is, 
of  course,  true  that  a  Christian  Church  (whether  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  or  not,  depends  on  the  connotation  of  the  defi- 
nite article)  existed  before  the  Christian  scriptures ;  and  that 
the  infallibility  of  these  depends  upon  the  infallibility  of  the 
judgment  of  the  persons  who  selected  the  books,  of  which 
they  are  composed,  out  of  the  mass  of  literature  current 


PROLOGUE.  21 

among  the  early  Christians.  The  logical  acumen  of  Augus- 
tine showed  him  that  the  authority  of  the  Gospel  he  preached 
must  rest  on  that  of  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged.*  But 
it  is  no  less  true  that  the  Hebrew  and  the  Septuagint  versions 
of  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  Old  Testament  books  existed  before 
the  birth  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth ;  and  that  their  divine  author- 
ity is  presupposed  by,  and  therefore  can  hardly  depend  upon, 
the  religious  body  constituted  by  his  disciples.  As  every- 
body knows,  the  very  conception  of  a  "  Christ "  is  purely 
Jewish.  The  validity  of  the  argument  from  the  Messianic 
prophecies  vanishes  unless  their  infallible  authority  is  granted ; 
and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  whether  we  turn  to  the  Gospels,  the 
Epistles,  or  the  writings  of  the  early  Apologists,  the  Jewish 
scriptures  are  recognized  as  the  highest  court  of  appeal  of  the 
Christian. 

The  proposal  to  cite  Christian  "  antiquity  "  as  a  witness 
to  the  infallibity  of  the  Old  Testament,  when  its  own  claims 
to  authority  vanish,  if  certain  propositions  contained  in  the 
Old  Testament  are  erroneous,  hardly  satisfies  the  require- 
ments of  lay  logic.  It  is  as  if  a  claimant  to  be  sole  legatee, 
under  another  kind  of  testament,  should  offer  his  assertion  as 
sufficient  evidence  of  the  validity  of  the  will.  And,  even 
were  not  such  a  circular,  or  rather  rotatory  argument,  that 
the  infallibility  of  the  Bible  is  testified  by  the  infallible 
Church,  whose  infallibility  is  testified  by  the  infallible  Bible, 
too  absurd  for  serious  consideration,  it  remains  permissible  to 
ask :  Where  and  when  the  Church,  during  the  period  of  its 
infallibility,  as  limited  by  Anglican  dogmatic  necessities,  has 
officially  decreed  the  "  actual  historical  truth  of  all  records  " 
in  the  Old  Testament  ?  Was  Augustine  heretical  when  he 
denied  the  actual  historical  truth  of  the  record  of  the  Crea- 
tion? Father  Suarez,  standing  on  later  Eoman  tradition, 
may  have  a  right  to  declare  that  he  was ;  but  it  does  not  lie 

*  Ego  rero  evangelic-  non  crederem,  nisi  ecclesiae  Catholicae  me  com- 
moveret  auctoritas. — Contra  Epistolam  Ilanichcei,  cap.  v. 


22  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

in  the  mouth  of  those  who  limit  their  appeal  to  that  early 
"  antiquity,"  in  which  Augustine  played  so  great  a  part,  to 
say  so. 

Among  the  watchers  of  the  course  of  the  world  of  thought, 
some  view  with  delight  and  some  with  horror,  the  recrudes- 
cence of  Supernaturalism  which  manifests  itself  among  us, 
in  shapes  ranged  along  the  whole  flight  of  steps,  which,  in 
this  case,  separates  the  sublime  from  the  ridiculous — from 
ISTeo- Catholicism  and  Inner-light  mysticism,  at  the  top,  to 
unclean  things,  not  worthy  of  mention  in  the  same  breath,  at 
the  bottom.  In  my  poor  opinion,  the  importance  of  these 
manifestations  is  often  greatly  over-estimated.  The  extant 
forms  of  Supernaturalism  have  deep  roots  in  human  nature, 
and  will  undoubtedly  die  hard;  but,  in  these  latter  days, 
they  have  to  cope  with  an  enemy  whose  full  strength  is  only 
just  beginning  to  be  put  out,  and  whose  forces,  gathering 
strength  year  by  year,  are  hemming  them  round  on  every 
side.  This  enemy  is  Science,  in  the  acceptation  of  sys- 
tematized natural  knowledge,  which,  during  the  last  two 
centuries,  has  extended  those  methods  of  investigation,  the 
worth  of  which  is  confirmed  by  daily  appeal  to  Nature,  to 
every  region  in  which  the  Supernatural  has  hitherto  been 
recognized. 

When  scientific  historical  criticism  reduced  the  annals  of 
heroic  Greece  and  of  regal  Rome  to  the  level  of  fables ;  when 
the  unity  of  authorship  of  the  Iliad  was  successfully  assailed 
by  scientific  literary  criticism  ;  when  scientific  physical  criti- 
cism, after  exploding  the  geocentric  theory  of  the  universe, 
and  reducing  the  solar  system  itself  to  one  of  millions  of  groups 
of  like  cosmic  specks,  circling,  at  unimaginable  distances  from 
one  another,  through  infinite  space,  showed  the  supematu- 
ralistic  theories  of  the  duration  of  the  earth  and  of  life  upon 
it,  to  be  as  inadequate  as  those  of  its  relative  dimensions  and 
importance  had  been ;  it  needed  no  prophetic  gift  to  see  that, 
sooner  or  later,  the  Jewish  and  the  early  Christian  records 


PROLOGUE.  23 

would  be  treated  in  the  same  manner ;  that  the  authorship 
of  the  Hexateuch  and  of  the  Gospels  would  be  as  severely 
tested ;  and  that  the  evidence  in  favor  of  the  veracity  of  many 
of  the  statements  found  in  the  Scriptures  would  have  to  be 
strong  indeed,  if  they  were  to  be  opposed  to  the  conclusions  of 
physical  science.  In  point  of  fact,  so  far  as  I  can  discover, 
no  one  competent  to  judge  of  the  evidential  strength  of  these 
conclusions,  ventures  now  to  say  that  the  biblical  accounts  of 
the  creation  and  of  the  deluge  are  true  in  the  natural  sense 
of  the  words  of  the  narratives.  The  most  the  modern 
Eeconciler  ventures  upon  is  to  affirm,  that  some  quite  dif- 
ferent sense  may  be  put  upon  the  words ;  and  that  this  non- 
natural  sense  may,  with  a  little  trouble,  be  manipulated  into 
some  sort  of  non-contradiction  of  scientific  truth. 

My  purpose,  in  the  essay  (XVI.)  which  treats  of  the 
narrative  of  the  Deluge,  was  to  prove,  by  physical  criticism, 
that  no  such  event  as  that  described  ever  took  place;  to 
exhibit  the  untrustworthy  character  of  the  narrative  dem- 
onstrated by  literary  criticism ;  and,  finally,  to  account  for 
its  origin,  by  producing  a  form  of  those  ancient  legends  of 
pagan  Chaldasa,  from  which  the  biblical  compilation  is 
manifestly  derived.  I  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  main 
propositions  of  this  essay  can  be  seriously  challenged. 

In  the  essays  (II.,  III.)  on  the  narrative  of  the  Creation,  I 
have  endeavored  to  controvert  the  assertion  that  modern 
science  supports,  either  the  interpretation  put  upon  it  by  Mr. 
Gladstone,  or  any  interpretation  which  is  compatible  with 
the  general  sense  of  the  narrative,  quite  apart  from  particular 
details.  The  first  chapter  of  Genesis  teaches  the  super- 
natural creation  of  the  present  forms  of  life ;  modern  science 
teaches  that  they  have  come  about  by  evolution.  The  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  teaches  the  successive  origin — firstly,  of 
all  the  plants,  secondly,  of  all  the  aquatic  and  aerial  animals, 
thirdly,  of  all  the  terrestrial  animals,  which  now  exist — 
during  distinct  intervals  of  time ;  modern  science  teaches  that, 
throughout  all  the  duration  of  an  immensely  long  past,  so  far 


24  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

as  we  have  any  adequate  knowledge  of  it  (that  is  as  far  back 
as  the  Silurian  epoch),  plants,  aquatic,  aerial,  and  terrestrial 
animals  have  co-existed  ;  that  the  earliest  known  are  unlike 
those  which  at  present  exist;  and  that  the  modern  species 
have  come  into  existence  as  the  last  terms  of  a  series,  the 
members  of  which  have  appeared  one  after  another.  Thus, 
far  from  confirming  the  account  in  Genesis,  the  results  of 
modern  science,  so  far  as  they  go,  are  in  principle,  as  in 
detail,  hopelessly  discordant  with  it. 

Yet,  if  the  pretensions  to  infallibility  set  up,  not  by  the 
ancient  Hebrew  writings  themselves,  but  by  the  ecclesiastical 
champions  and  friends  from  whom  they  may  well  pray  to  be 
delivered,  thus  shatter  themselves  against  the  rock  of  natural 
knowledge,  in  respect  of  the  two  most  important  of  all 
events,  the  origin  of  things  and  the  palingenesis  of  terrestrial 
life,  what  historical  credit  dare  any  serious  thinker  attach  to 
the  narratives  of  the  fabrication  of  Eve,  of  the  Fall,  of  the 
commerce  between  the  Bene  Eloliim  and  the  daughters  of 
men,  which  lie  between  the  creational  and  the  diluvial 
legends  ?  And,  if  these  are  to  lose  all  historical  worth,  what 
becomes  of  the  infallibility  of  those  who,  according  to  the 
later  scriptures,  have  accepted  them,  argued  from  them,  and 
staked  far-reaching  dogmatic  conclusions  upon  their  histori- 
cal accuracy  ? 

It  is  the  merest  ostrich  policy  for  contemporary  ecclesias- 
ticism  to  try  to  hide  its  Hexateuchal  head — in  the  hope  that 
the  inseparable  connection  of  its  body  with  pre-Abrahamic 
legends  may  be  overlooked.  The  question  will  still  be  asked,  if 
the  first  nine  chapters  of  the  Pentateuch  are  unhistorical,  how 
is  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  remainder  to  be  guaranteed  ? 
What  more  intrinsic  claim  has  the  story  of  the  Exodus  than 
that  of  the  Deluge,  to  belief  ?  If  God  did  not  walk  in  the  Gar- 
den of  Eden,  how  can  we  be  assured  that  he  spoke  from  Sinai? 

In  some  other  of  the  following  essays  (IX.,  X.,  XL,  XII., 
XIV.,  XV.)  I  have  endeavored  to  show  that  sober  and  well- 


PROLOGUE.  25 

founded  physical  and  literary  criticism  plays  no  less  havoc 
with  the  doctrine  that  the  canonical  scriptures  of  the  New 
Testament  "declare  incontrovertibly  the  actual  historical 
truth  in  all  records."  We  are  told  that  the  Gospels  contain 
a  true  revelation  of  the  spiritual  world — a  proposition  which, 
in  one  sense  of  the  word  "  spiritual,"  I  should  not  think  it 
necessary  to  dispute.  But,  when  it  is  taken  to  signify  that 
everything  we  are  told  about  the  world  of  spirits  in  these 
books  is  infallibly  true ;  that  we  are  bound  to  accept  the  de- 
monology  which  constitutes  an  inseparable  part  of  their 
teaching  ;  and  to  profess  belief  in  a  Supernaturalism  as  gross 
as  that  of  any  primitive  people — it  is  at  any  rate  permissible 
to  ask  why  ?  Science  may  be  unable  to  define  the  limits  of 
possibility,  but  it  can  not  escape  from  the  moral  obligation 
to  weigh  the  evidence  in  favor  of  any  alleged  wonderful  oc- 
currence ;  and  I  have  endeavored  to  show  that  the  evidence 
for  the  Gadarene  miracle  is  altogether  worthless.  We  have 
simply  three,  partially  discrepant,  versions  of  a  story,  about 
the  primitive  form,  the  origin,  and  the  authority  for  which 
we  know  absolutely  nothing.  But  the  evidence  in  favor  of 
the  Gadarene  miracle  is  as  good  as  that  for  any  other. 

Elsewhere,  I  have  pointed  out  that  it  is  utterly  beside  the 
mark  to  declaim  against  these  conclusions  on  the  ground  of 
their  asserted  tendency  to  deprive  mankind  of  the  consola- 
tions of  the  Christian  faith,  and  to  destroy  the  foundations 
of  morality ;  still  less  to  brand  them  with  the  question-beg- 
ging vituperative  appellation  of  "  infidelity."  The  point  is 
not  whether  they  are  wicked ;  but,  whether,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  scientific  method,  they  are  irrefragably  true.  If 
they  are,  they  will  be  accepted  in  time,  whether  they  are 
wicked,  or  not  wicked.  Nature,  so  far  as  we  have  been  able 
to  attain  to  any  insight  into  her  ways,  recks  little  about  con- 
solation and  makes  for  righteousness  by  very  round-about 
paths.  And,  at  any  rate,  whatever  may  be  possible  for  other 
people,  it  is  becoming  less  and  less  possible  for  the  man  who 
puts  his  faith  in  scientific  methods  of  ascertaining  truth,  and 


26  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

is  accustomed  to  have  that  faith  justified  by  daily  experience, 
to  be  consciously  false  to  his  principle  in  any  matter.  But 
the  number  of  such  men,  driven  into  the  use  of  scientific 
methods  of  inquiry  and  taught  to  trust  them,  by  their  educa- 
tion, their  daily  professional  and  business  needs,  is  increasing 
and  will  continually  increase.  The  phraseology  of  Superna- 
turalism  may  remain  on  men's  lips,  but  in  practice  they  are 
Naturalists.  The  magistrate  who  listens  with  devout  atten- 
tion to  the  precept  "  Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live  " 
on  Sunday,  on  Monday,  dismisses,  as  intrinsically  absurd,  a 
charge  of  bewitching  a  cow  brought  against  some  old  woman ; 
the  superintendent  of  a  lunatic  asylum  who  substituted  exor- 
cism for  rational  modes  of  treatment  would  have  but  a  short 
tenure  of  office;  even  parish  clerks  doubt  the  utility  of 
prayers  for  rain,  so  long  as  the  wind  is  in  the  east ;  and  an 
outbreak  of  pestilence  sends  men,  not  to  the  churches,  but  to 
the  drains.  In  spite  of  prayers  for  the  success  of  our  arms 
and  Te  Deums  for  victory,  our  real  faith  is  in  big  battalions 
and  keeping  our  powder  dry  ;  in  knowledge  of  the  science  of 
warfare  ;  in  energy,  courage,  and  discipline.  In  these,  as  in 
all  other  practical  affairs,  we  act  on  the  aphorism  "  Labor  are 
est  orare " ;  we  admit  that  intelligent  work  is  the  only  ac- 
ceptable worship ;  and  that,  whether  there  be  a  Supernature 
or  not,  our  business  is  with  Nature. 

It  is  important  to  note  that  the  principle  of  the  scientific 
Naturalifm  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in 
which  the  intellectual  movement  of  the  Eenascence  has  cul- 
minated, and  which  was  first  clearly  formulated  by  Descartes, 
leads  not  to  the  denial  of  the  existence  of  any  Supernature ;  * 

*  I  employ  the  words  "  Supernature  "  and  "  Supernatural  "  in  their 
popular  senses.  For  myself,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  term  "  Nature  " 
covers  the  totality  of  that  which  is.  The  world  of  psychical  phenomena 
appears  to  me  to  be  as  much  part  of  "  Nature  "  as  the  world  of  physi- 
cal phenomena  ;  and  I  am  unable  to  perceive  any  justification  for  cut- 
ting the  Universe  into  two  halves,  one  natural  and  one  supernatural. 


PROLOGUE.  27 

but  simply  to  the  denial  of  the  validity  of  the  evidence  ad- 
duced in  favor  of  this,  or  of  that,  extant  form  of  Superna- 
turalism. 

Looking  at  the  matter  from  the  most  rigidly  scientific 
point  of  view,  the  assumption  that,  amidst  the  myriads  of 
worlds  scattered  through  endless  space,  there  can  be  no  in- 
telligence, as  much  greater  than  man's  as  his  is  greater  than 
a  blackbeetle's ;  no  being  endowed  with  powers  of  influencing 
the  course  of  nature  as  much  greater  than  his,  as  his  is 
greater  than  a  snaiPs,  seems  to  me  not  merely  baseless,  but 
impertinent.  Without  stepping  beyond  the  analogy  of  that 
which  is  known,  it  is  easy  to  people  the  cosmos  with  entities, 
in  ascending  scale,  until  we  reach  something  practically  in- 
distinguishable from  omnipotence,  omnipresence,  and  omnis- 
cience. If  our  intelligence  can,  in  some  matters,  surely  re- 
produce the  past  of  thousands  of  years  ago  and  anticipate  the 
future,  thousands  of  years  hence,  it  is  clearly  within  the 
limits  of  possibility  that  some  greater  intellect,  even  of  the 
same  order,  may  be  able  to  mirror  the  whole  past  and  the 
whole  future ;  if  the  universe  is  penetrated  by  a  medium  of 
such  a  nature  that  a  magnetic  needle  on  the  earth  answers  to 
a  commotion  in  the  sun,  an  omnipresent  agent  is  also  con- 
ceivable ;  if  our  insignificant  knowledge  gives  us  some  influ- 
ence over  events,  practical  omniscience  may  confer  indefina- 
bly greater  power.  Finally,  if  evidence  that  a  thing  may  be, 
were  equivalent  to  proof  that  it  is,  analogy  might  justify  the 
construction  of  a  naturalistic  theology  and  demonology  not 
less  wonderful  than  the  current  supernatural;  just  as  it 
might  justify  the  peopling  of  Mars,  or  of  Jupiter,  with  liv- 
ing forms  to  which  terrestrial  biology  offers  no  parallel. 
Until  human  life  is  longer  and  the  duties  of  the  present 
press  less  heavily,  I  do  not  think  that  wise  men  will  occupy 
themselves  with  Jovian,  or  Martian,  natural  history ;  and 
they  will  probably  agree  to  a  verdict  of  "  not  proven  "  in  re- 
spect of  naturalistic  theology  ;  taking  refuge  in  that  agnostic 
confession,  which  appears  to  me  to  be  the  only  position  for 


28  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

people  who  object  to  say  that  they  know  what  they  are  quite 
aware  they  do  not  know.  As  to  the  interests  of  morality,  I 
am  disposed  to  think  that  if  mankind  could  be  got  to  act  up 
to  this  last  principle  in  every  relation  of  life,  a  reformation 
would  be  effected  such  as  the  world  has  not  yet  seen  ;  an  ap- 
proximation to  the  millennium,  such  as  no  supernaturalistic 
religion  has  ever  yet  succeeded,  or  seems  likely  ever  to  suc- 
ceed, in  effecting. 

I  have  hitherto  dwelt  upon  scientific  Naturalism  chiefly 
in  its  critical  and  destructive  aspect.  But  the  present  in- 
carnation of  the  spirit  of  the  Eenascence  differs  from  its 
predecessor  in  the  eighteenth  century,  in  that  it  builds  up, 
as  well  as  pulls  down. 

That  of  which  it  has  laid  the  foundation,  of  which  it  is 
already  raising  the  superstructure,  is  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion. But  so  many  strange  misconceptions  are  current  about 
this  doctrine — it  is  attacked  on  such  false  grounds  by  its 
enemies,  and  made  to  cover  so  much  that  is  disputable  by 
some  of  its  friends,  that  I  think  it  well  to  define  as  clearly  as 
I  can,  what  I  do  not  and  what  I  do  understand  by  the  doc- 
trine. 

I  have  nothing  to  say  to  any  "  Philosophy  of  Evolution." 
Attempts  to  construct  such  a  philosophy  may  be  as  useful, 
nay,  even  as  admirable,  as  was  the  attempt  of  Descartes  to 
get  at  a  theory  of  the  universe  by  the  same  d  priori  road ;  but, 
in  my  judgment,  they  are  as  premature.  Nor,  for  this  pur- 
pose, have  I  to  do  with  any  theory  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species," 
much  as  I  value  that  which  is  known  as  the  Darwinian 
theory.  That  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  presupposes 
evolution  is  quite  true;  but  it  is  not  true  that  evolution 
necessarily  implies  natural  selection.  In  fact,  evolution 
might  conceivably  have  taken  place,  without  the  development 
of  groups  possessing  the  characters  of  species. 

For  me,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  no  speculation,  but  a 
generalization  of  certain  facts,  which  may  be  observed  by  any 


PROLOGUE.  29 

one  who  will  take  the  necessary  trouble.  These  facts  are 
those  which  are  classed  by  biologists  under  the  heads  of  Em- 
bryology and  of  Palaeontology.  Embryology  proves  that 
every  higher  form  of  individual  life  becomes  what  it  is  by  a 
process  of  gradual  differentiation  from  an  extremely  low 
form ;  palaeontology  proves,  in  some  cases,  and  renders  prob- 
able in  all,  that  the  oldest  types  of  a  group  are  the  lowest ; 
and  that  they  have  been  followed  by  a  gradual  succession  of 
more  and  more  differentiated  forms.  It  is  simply  a  fact, 
that  evolution  of  the  individual  animal  and  plant  is  taking 
place,  as  a  natural  process,  in  millions  and  millions  of  cases 
every  day ;  it  is  a  fact,  that  the  species  which  have  succeeded 
one  another  in  the  past,  do,  in  many  cases,  present  just  those 
morphological  relations,  which  they  must  possess,  if  they  had 
proceeded,  one  from  the  other,  by  an  analogous  process  of 
evolution. 

The  alternative  presented,  therefore,  is :  either  the  forms 
of  one  and  the  same  type — say,  e.  g.,  that  of  the  Horse  tribe  * 
— arose  successively,  but  independently  of  one  another,  at  in- 
tervals, during  myriads  of  years;  or,  the  later  forms  are 
modified  descendants  of  the  earlier.  And  the  latter  supposi- 
tion is  so  vastly  more  probable  than  the  former,  that  rational 
men  will  adopt  it,  unless  satisfactory  evidence  to  the  contrary 
can  be  produced.  The  objection  sometimes  put  forward,  that 
no  one  yet  professes  to  have  seen  one  species  pass  into  another 
comes  oddly  from  those  who  believe  that  mankind  are  all  de- 
scended from  Adam.  Has  any  one  then  yet  seen  the  produc- 
tion of  negroes  from  a  white  stock,  or  vice  versa  f  Moreover, 
is  it  absolutely  necessary  to  have  watched  every  step  of  the 
progress  of  a  planet,  to  be  justified  in  concluding  that  it 
really  does  go  round  the  sun  ?  If  so,  astronomy  is  in  a  bad 
wav. 

*  The  general  reader  will  find  an  admirably  clear  and  concise  state- 
ment of  the  evidence  in  this  ease,  in  Professor  Flower's  recently  pub- 
lished work  The  Horse :  a  Study  in  Natural  History. 


30  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

I  do  not,  for  a  moment,  presume  to  suggest  that  some  one 
far  better  acquainted  than  I  am  with  astronomy  and  physics ; 
or  that  a  master  of  the  new  chemistry,  with  its  extraordinary 
revelations  ;  or  that  a  student  of  the  development  of  human 
society,  of  language,  and  of  religions,  may  not  find  a  sufficient 
foundation  for  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in  these  several 
regions.  On  the  contrary,  I  rejoice  to  see  that  scientific  in- 
vestigation, in  all  directions,  is  tending  to  the  same  result. 
And  it  may  well  be,  that  it  is  only  my  long  occupation  with 
biological  matters  that  leads  me  to  feel  safer  among  them 
than  anywhere  else.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I  take  my  stand  on 
the  facts  of  embryology  and  of  palaeontology ;  and  I  hold  that 
our  present  knowledge  of  these  facts  is  sufficiently  thorough 
and  extensive  to  justify  the  assertion  that  all  future  philo- 
sophical and  theological  speculations  will  have  to  accomo- 
date themselves  to  some  such  common  body  of  established 
truths  as  the  following : 

1.  Plants  and  animals  have  existed  on  our  planet  for 
many  hundred  thousand,  probably  millions  of  years.  Dur- 
ing this  time,  their  forms,  or  species,  have  undergone  a  suc- 
cession of  changes,  which  eventually  gave  rise  to  the  species 
which  constitute  the  present  living  population  of  the  earth. 
There  is  no  evidence,  nor  any  reason  to  suspect  that  this 
secular  process  of  evolution  is  other  than  a  part  of  the 
ordinary  course  of  nature;  there  is  no  more  ground  for 
imagining  the  occurrence  of  supernatural  intervention,  at 
any  moment  in  the  development  of  species  in  the  past, 
than  there  is  for  supposing  such  intervention  to  take  place, 
at  any  moment  in  the  development  of  an  individual  animal 
or  plant,  at  the  present  day. 

2.  At  present,  every  individual  animal  or  plant  com- 
mences its  existence  as  an  organism  of  extremely  simple 
anatomical  structure;  and  it  acquires  all  the  complexity  it 
ultimately  possesses  by  gradual  differentiation  into  parts  of 
various  structure  and  function.  When  a  series  of  specific 
forms  of   the  same   type,  extending   over  a  long  period  of 


PROLOGUE.  31 

past  time,  is  examined,  the  relation  between  the  earlier 
and  the  later  forms  is  analogous  to  that  between  earlier 
and  later  stages  of  individual  development.  Therefore,  it  is 
a  probable  conclusion  that,  if  we  could  follow  living  beings 
back  to  their  earliest  states,  we  should  find  them  to  present 
forms  similar  to  those  of  the  individual  germ,  or,  what 
comes  to  the  same  thing,  of  those  lowest  known  organisms 
which  stand  upon  the  boundary  line  between  plants  and 
animals.  At  present,  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  living 
world  stops  very  far  short  of  this  point. 

3.  It  is  generally  agreed,  and  there  is  certainly  no  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary,  that  all  plants  are  devoid  of  conscious- 
ness ;  that  they  neither  feel,  desire,  nor  think.  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  the  evolution  of  the  primordial  living  substance 
should  have  taken  place  only  along  the  plant  line.  In  that 
case,  the  result  might  have  been  a  wealth  of  vegetable  life,  as 
great,  perhaps  as  varied,  as  at  present,  though  certainly  wide- 
ly different  from  the  present  flora,  in  the  evolution  of  which 
animals  have  played  so  great  a  part.  But  the  living  world 
thus  constituted  would  be  simply  an  admirable  piece  of  un- 
conscious machinery,  the  working  out  of  which  lay  potentially 
in  its  primitive  composition ;  pleasure  and  pain  would  have 
no  place  in  it ;  it  would  be  a  veritable  Garden  of  Eden  with- 
out any  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  moral  government  of  such  a  world  could  no  more 
be  asked,  than  we  could  reasonably  seek  for  a  moral  purpose 
in  a  kaleidoscope. 

4.  How  far  down  the  scale  of  animal  life  the  phenomena 
of  consciousness  are  manifested,  it  is  impossible  to  say.  No 
one  doubts  their  presence  in  his  fellow-men  ;  and,  unless  any 
strict  Cartesians  are  left,  no  one  doubts  that  mamnals  and 
birds  are  to  be  reckoned  creatures  that  have  feelings  anal- 
ogous to  our  smell,  taste,  sight,  hearing,  touch,  pleasure,  and 
pain.  For  my  own  part,  I  should  be  disposed  to  extend  this 
analogical  judgment  a  good  deal  further.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  lowest  forms  of  plants  are  to  be  denied  con- 


32  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

sciousness,  I  do  not  see  on  what  ground  it  is  to  be  ascribed 
to  the  lowest  animals.  I  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  an 
infusory  animalcule,  a  foraminifer,  or  a  fresh-water  polype 
is  capable  of  feeling ;  and,  in  spite  of  Shakspere,  I  have 
doubts  about  the  great  sensitiveness  of  the  "  poor  beetle  that 
we  tread  upon."  The  question  is  equally  perplexing  when 
we  turn  to  the  stages  of  development  of  the  individual. 
Granted  a  fowl  feels  ;  that  the  chick  just  hatched  feels ;  that 
the  chick  when  it  chirps  within  the  egg  may  possibly  feel ; 
what  is  to  be  said  of  it,  on  the  fifth  day,  when  the  bird  is 
there,  but  with  all  its  tissues  nascent?  Still  more,  on  the 
first  day,  when  it  is  nothing  but  a  flat  cellular  disk  ?  I  cer- 
tainly can  not  bring  myself  to  believe  that  this  disk  feels. 
Yet  if  it  does  not,  there  must  be  some  time  in  the  three 
weeks,  between  the  first  day  and  the  day  of  hatching,  when, 
as  a  concomitant,  or  a  consequence,  of  the  attainment  by  the 
brain  of  the  chick  of  a  certain  stage  of  structural  evolution, 
consciousness  makes  its  appearance.  I  have  frequently  ex- 
pressed my  incapacity  to  understand  the  nature  of  the  rela- 
tion between  consciousness  and  a  certain  anatomical  tissue, 
which  is  thus  established  by  observation.  But  the  fact  re- 
mains that,  so  far  as  observaton  and  experiment  go,  they 
teach  us  that  the  psychical  phenomena  are  dependent  on  the 
physical. 

In  like  manner,  if  fishes,  insects,  scorpions,  and  such  ani- 
mals as  the  pearly  nautilus,  possess  feeling,  then  undoubtedly 
consciousness  was  present  in  the  world  as  far  back  as  the 
Silurian  epoch.  But,  if  the  earliest  animals  were  similar  to 
our  rhizopods  and  monads,  there  must  have  been  some  time, 
between  the  much  earlier  epoch  in  which  they  constituted  the 
whole  animal  population  and  the  Silurian,  in  which  feeling 
dawned,  in  consequence  of  the  organism  having  reached  the 
stage  of  evolution  on  which  it  depends. 

5.  Consciousness  has  various  forms,  which  may  be  mani- 
fested independently  of  one  another.  The  feelings  of  light 
and  color,  of  sound,  of  touch,  though  so  often  associated  with 


PROLOGUE.  33 

those  of  pleasure  and  pain,  are,  by  nature,  as  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  them  as  is  thinking.  An  animal  devoid  of  the 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  of  pain,  may  nevertheless  exhibit  all 
the  effects  of  sensation  and  purposive  action.  Therefore,  it 
would  be  a  justifiable  hypothesis  that,  long  after  organic  evo- 
lution had  attained  to  consciousness,  pleasure  and  pain  were 
still  absent.  Such  a  world  would  be  without  either  happi- 
ness or  misery ;  no  act  could  be  punished  and  none  could  be 
rewarded ;  and  it  could  have  no  moral  purpose. 

6.  Suppose,  for  argument's  sake,  that  all  mammals  and 
birds  are  subjects  of  pleasure  and  pain.  Then  we  may  be 
certain  that  these  forms  of  consciousness  were  in  existence  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Mesozoic  epoch.  From  that  time  forth, 
pleasure  has  been  distributed  without  reference  to  merit,  and 
pain  inflicted  without  reference  to  demerit,  throughout  all 
but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  higher  animals.  Moreover,  the 
amount  and  the  severity  of  the  pain,  no  less  than  the  variety 
and  acuteness  of  the  pleasure,  have  increased  with  every 
advance  in  the  scale  of  evolution.  As  suffering  came  into  the 
world,  not  in  consequence  of  a  fall,  but  of  a  rise,  in  the  scale 
of  being,  so  every  further  rise  has  brought  more  suffering. 
As  the  evidence  stands,  it  would  appear  that  the  sort  of  brain 
which  characterizes  the  highest  mammals  and  which,  so  far 
as  we  know,  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  highest 
sensibility,  did  not  come  into  existence  before  the  tertiary 
epoch.  The  primordial  anthropoid  was  probably,  in  this  re- 
spect, on  much  the  same  footing  as  his  pithecoid  kin.  Like 
them  he  stood  upon  his  "  natural  rights,"  gratified  all  his 
desires  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and  was  as  incapable  of 
either  right  or  wrong  doing  as  they.  It  would  be  as  absurd 
as  in  their  case,  to  regard  his  pleasures,  any  more  than  theirs, 
as  moral  rewards,  and  his  pains,  any  more  than  theirs,  as 
moral  punishments. 

7.  From  the  remotest  ages  of  which  we  have  any  cog- 
nizance, death  has  been  the  natural  and,  apparently,  the 
necessary  concomitant  of  life.     In  our  hypothetical  world 


34  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

(3),  inhabited  by  nothing  but  plants,  death  must  have  very 
early  resulted  from  the  struggle  for  existence :  many  of  the 
crowd  must  have  jostled  one  another  out  of  the  conditions 
on  which  life  depends.  The  occurrence  of  death,  as  far  back 
as  we  have  any  fossil  record  of  life,  however,  needs  not  to  be 
proved  by  such  arguments ;  for,  if  there  had  been  no  death 
there  would  have  been  no  fossil  remains,  such  as  the  great 
majority  of  those  we  meet  with.  ISTot  only  was  there  death 
in  the  world,  as  far  as  the  record  of  life  takes  us ;  but,  ever 
since  mammals  and  birds  have  been  preyed  upon  by  car- 
nivorous animals,  there  has  been  painful  death,  inflicted  by 
mechanisms  specially  adapted  for  inflicting  it. 

8.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  closeness  of  the 
structural  relations  between  the  human  organization  and 
that  of  the  mammals  which  come  nearest  to  him,  on  the  one 
hand  ;  and  with  the  palaeontological  history  of  such  animals 
as  horses  and  dogs,  on  the  other ;  will  not  be  disposed  to 
question  the  origin  of  man  from  forms  which  stand  in  the 
same  sort  of  relation  to  Homo  sapiens,  as  Hipparion  does  to 
Equus.  I  think  it  a  conclusion,  fully  justified  by  analogy, 
that,  sooner  or  later,  we  shall  discover  the  remains  of  our 
less  specialized  primatic  ancestors  in  the  strata  which  have 
yielded  the  less  specialized  equine  and  canine  quadrupeds. 
At  present,  fossil  remains  of  men  do  not  take  us  back  further 
than  the  later  part  of  the  Quaternary  epoch ;  and,  as  was  to 
be  expected,  they  do  not  differ  more  from  existing  men,  than 
Quaternary  horses  differ  from  existing  horses.  Still  earlier 
we  find  traces  of  man,  in  implements,  such  as  are  used  by 
the  ruder  savages  at  the  present  day.  Later,  the  remains  of 
the  palaeolithic  and  neolithic  conditions  take  us  gradually 
from  the  savage  state  to  the  civilizations  of  Egypt  and  of 
Mycenae;  though  the  true  chronological  order  of  the  re- 
mains actually  discovered  may  be  uncertain. 

9.  Much  has  yet  to  be  learned,  but,  at  present,  natural 
knowledge  affords  no  support  to  the  notion  that  men  have 
fallen  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  state.     On  the  contrary, 


PROLOGUE.  35 

everything  points  to  a  slow  natural  evolution ;  which,  favored 
by  the  surrounding  conditions  in  such  localities  as  the  valleys 
of  the  Yang-tsekang,  the  Euphrates,  and  the  Nile,  reached  a 
relatively  high  pitch,  five  or  six  thousand  years  ago ;  while, 
in  many  other  regions,  the  savage  condition  has  persisted 
down  to  our  day.  In  all  this  vast  lapse  of  time  there  is  not 
a  trace  of  the  occurrence  of  any  general  destruction  of  the 
human  race ;  not  the  smallest  indication  that  man  has  been 
treated  on  any  other  principles  than  the  rest  of  the  animal 
world. 

10.  The  results  of  the  process  of  evolution  in  the  case  of 
man,  and  in  that  of  his  more  nearly  allied  contemporaries, 
have  been  marvelously  different.  Yet  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
small  primitive  differences  of  a  certain  order,  must,  in  the 
long  run,  bring  about  a  wide  divergence  of  the  human  stock 
from  the  others.  It  is  a  reasonable  supposition  that,  in  the 
earliest  human  organisms,  an  improved  brain,  a  voice  more 
capable  of  modulation  and  articulation,  limbs  which  lent 
themselves  better  to  gesture,  a  more  perfect  hand,  capable 
among  other  things  of  imitating  form  in  plastic  or  other 
material,  were  combined  with  the  curiosity,  the  mimetic 
tendency,  the  strong  family  affection  of  the  next  lower 
group;  and  that  they  were  accompanied  by  exceptional 
length  of  life  and  a  prolonged  minority.  The  last  two 
peculiarities  are  obviously  calculated  to  strengthen  the  fam- 
ily organization,  and  to  give  great  weight  to  its  educative  influ- 
ences. The  potentiality  of  language,  as  the  vocal  symbol  of 
thought,  lay  in  the  faculty  of  modulating  and  articulating  the 
voice.  The  potentiality  of  writing,  as  the  visual  symbol  of 
thought,  lay  in  the  hand  that  could  draw ;  and  in  the  mi- 
metic tendency,  which,  as  we  know,  was  gratified  by  draw- 
ing, as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Quaternary  man.  With 
speech  as  the  record,  in  tradition,  of  the  experience  of  more 
than  one  generation ;  with  writing  as  the  record  of  that  of 
any  number  of  generations ;  the  experience  of  the  race, 
tested  and  corrected  generation  after  generation,  could  be 


36  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

stored  up  and  made  the  starting  point  for  fresh  progress. 
Having  these  perfectly  natural  factors  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  man  before  us,  it  seems  unnecessary  to  go  further 
a-field  in  search  of  others. 

11.  That  the  doctrine  of  evolution  implies  a  former  state 
of  innocence  of  mankind  is  quite  true ;  but,  as  I  have  re- 
marked, it  is  the  innocence  of  the  ape  and  of  the  tiger,  whose 
acts,  however  they  may  run  counter  to  the  principles  of  mo- 
rality, it  would  be  absurd  to  blame.  The  lust  of  the  one  and 
the  ferocity  of  the  other  are  as  much  provided  for  in  their 
organization,  are  as  clear  evidences  of  design,  as  any  other 
features  that  can  be  named. 

Observation  and  experiment  upon  the  phenomena  of 
society  soon  taught  men,  that,  in  order  to  obtain  the  ad- 
vantages of  social  existence,  certain  rules  must  be  observed. 
Morality  commenced  with  society.  Society  is  possible  only 
upon  the  condition  that  the  members  of  it  shall  surrender 
more  or  less  of  their  individual  freedom  of  action.  In  primi- 
tive societies,  individual  selfishness  is  the  centrifugal  force  of 
such  intensity  that  it  is  constantly  bringing  the  social  organ- 
ization to  the  verge  of  destruction.  Hence  the  prominence 
of  the  positive  rules  of  obedience  to  the  elders ;  of  standing 
by  the  family  or  the  tribe  in  all  emergencies ;  of  fulfilling 
the  religious  rites,  non-observance  of  which  is  conceived  to 
damage  it  with  the  supernatural  powers,  belief  in  whose  ex- 
istence is  one  of  the  earliest  products  of  human  thought  r 
and  of  the  negative  rules,  which  restrain  each  from  meddling 
with  the  life  or  property  of  another. 

12.  The  highest  conceivable  form  of  human  society  is 
that  in  which  the  desire  to  do  what  is  best  for  the  whole, 
dominates  and  limits  the  action  of  every  member  of  that 
society.  The  more  complex  the  social  organization  the 
greater  the  number  of  acts  from  which  each  man  must 
abstain,  if  he  desires  to  do  that  which  is  best  for  all.  Thus 
the  progressive  evolution  of  society  means  increasing  restric- 
tion of  individual  freedom  in  certain  directions. 


PROLOGUE.  37 

"With  the  advance  of  civilization,  and  the  growth  of  cities 
and  of  nations  by  the  coalescence  of  families  and  of  tribes, 
the  rules  which  constitute  the  common  foundation  of  moral- 
ity and  of  law  became  more  numerous  and  complicated,  and 
the  temptations  to  break  or  evade  many  of  them  stronger. 
In  the  absence  of  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  natural  sanc- 
tions of  these  rules,  a  supernatural  sanction  was  assumed; 
and  imagination  supplied  the  motives  which  reason  was  sup- 
posed to  be  incompetent  to  furnish.  Beligion,  at  first  inde- 
pendent of  morality,  gradually  took  morality  under  its  pro- 
tection ;  and  the  supernaturalists  have  ever  since  tried  to 
persuade  mankind  that  the  existence  of  ethics  is  bound  up 
with  that  of  supernaturalism. 

I  am  not  of  that  opinion.  But,  whether  it  is  correct  or 
otherwise,  it  is  very  clear  to  me  that,  as  Beelzebub  is  not  to 
be  cast  out  by  the  aid  of  Beelzebub,  so  morality  is  not  to  be 
established  by  immorality.  It  is,  we  are  told,  the  special 
peculiarity  of  the  devil  that  he  was  a  liar  from  the  beginning. 
If  we  set  out  in  life  with  pretending  to  know  that  which  we 
do  not  know;  with  professing  to  accept  for  proof  evidence 
which  we  are  well  aware  is  inadequate;  with  willfully  shut- 
ting our  eyes  and  our  ears  to  facts  which  militate  against  this 
or  that  comfortable  hypothesis ;  we  are  assuredly  doing  our 
best  to  deserve  the  same  character. 

I  have  not  the  presumption  to  imagine  that,  in  spite  of  all 
my  efforts,  errors  may  not  have  crept  into  these  propositions. 
But  I  am  tolerably  confident  that  time  will  prove  them  to  be 
substantially  correct.  And  if  they  are  so,  I  confess  I  do  not 
see  how  any  extant  supernaturalistic  system  can  also  claim 
exactness.  That  they  are  irreconcilable  with  the  biblical 
cosmogony,  anthropology,  and  theodicy  is  obvious ;  but  they 
are  no  less  inconsistent  with  the  sentimental  Deism  of  the 
"  Vicaire  Savoyard"  and  his  numerous  modern  progeny.  It 
is  as  impossible,  to  my  mind,  to  suppose  that  the  evolutionary 
process  was  set  going  with  full  foreknowledge  of  the  result 


38  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  yet  with  what  we  should  understand  by  a  purely  benevo- 
lent intention,  as  it  is  to  imagine  that  the  intention  was 
purely  malevolent.  And  the  prevalence  of  dualistic  theories 
from  the  earliest  times  to  the  present  day — whether  in  the 
shape  of  the  doctrine  of  the  inherently  evil  nature  of  matter ; 
of  an  Ahriman ;  of  a  hard  and  cruel  Demiurge ;  of  a  diaboli- 
cal "prince  of  this  world,"  show  how  widely  this  difficulty 
has  been  felt. 

Many  seem  to  think  that,  when  it  is  admitted  that  the 
ancient  literature,  contained  in  our  Bibles,  has  no  more  claim 
to  infallibility  than  any  other  ancient  literature ;  when  it  is 
proved  that  the  Israelites  and  their  Christian  successors  ac- 
cepted a  great  many  supernaturalistic  theories  and  legends 
which  have  no  better  foundation  than  those  of  heathenism, 
nothing  remains  to  be  done  but  to  throw  the  Bible  aside  as 
so  much  waste  paper. 

I  have  always  opposed  this  opinion.  It  appears  to  me 
that  if  there  is  anybody  more  objectionable  than  the  ortho- 
dox Bibliolater  it  is  the  heterodox  Philistine,  who  can  discover 
in  a  literature  which,  in  some  respects,  has  no  superior,  noth- 
ing but  a  subject  for  scoffing  and  an  occasion  for  the  display 
of  his  conceited  ignorance  of  the  debt  he  owes  to  former  gen- 
erations. 

Twenty-two  years  ago  I  pleaded  for  the  use  of  the  Bible 
as  an  instrument  of  popular  education,  and  I  venture  to  re- 
peat what  I  then  said  : 

"  Consider  the  great  historical  fact  that,  for  three  cent- 
uries, this  book  has  been  woven  into  the  life  of  all  that  is  best 
and  noblest  in  English  history ;  that  it  has  become  the  na- 
tional epic  of  Britain  and  is  as  familiar  to  gentle  and  simple, 
from  John  o'  Groat's  House  to  Land's  End,  as  Dante  and 
Tasso  once  were  to  the  Italians;  that  it  is  written  in  the 
noblest  and  purest  English  and  abounds  in  exquisite  beauties 
of  mere  literary  form  ;  and,  finally,  that  it  forbids  the  veriest 
hind,  who  never  left  his  village,  to  be  ignorant  of  the  exist- 
ence of  other  countries  and  other  civilizations  and  of  a  great 


PROLOGUE.  39 

past,  stretching  back  to  the  furthest  limits  of  the  oldest  na- 
tions in  the  world.  By  the  study  of  what  other  book  could 
children  be  so  much  humanized  and  made  to  feel  that  each 
figure  in  that  vast  historical  procession  fills,  like  themselves, 
but  a  momentary  space  in  the  interval  between  the  Eterni- 
ties ;  and  earns  the  blessings  or  the  curses  of  all  time,  accord- 
ing to  its  effort  to  do  good  and  hate  evil,  even  as  they  also  are 
earning  their  payment  for  their  work."  * 

At  the  same  time,  I  laid  stress  upon  the  necessity  of  plac- 
ing such  instruction  in  lay  hands ;  in  the  hope  and  belief, 
that  it  would  thus  gradually  accommodate  itself  to  the  com- 
ing changes  of  opinion ;  that  the  theology  and  the  legend 
would  drop  more  and  more  out  of  sight,  while  the  perenni- 
ally interesting  historical,  literary,  and  ethical  contents  would 
come  more  and  more  into  view. 

I  may  add  yet  another  claim  of  the  Bible  to  the  respect 
and  the  attention  of  a  democratic  age.  Throughout  the  his- 
tory of  the  western  world,  the  Scriptures,  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian, have  been  the  great  instigators  of  revolt  against  the 
worst  forms  of  clerical  and  political  despotism.  The  Bible 
has  been  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  poor  and  of  the  oppressed ; 
down  to  modern  times,  no  State  has  had  a  constitution  in 
which  the  interests  of  the  people  are  so  largely  taken  into 
account,  in  which  the  duties,  so  much  more  than  the  privi- 
leges, of  rulers  are  insisted  upon,  as  that  drawn  up  for  Israel  in 
Deuteronomy  and  in  Leviticus ;  nowhere  is  the  fundamental 
truth  that  the  welfare  of  the  State,  in  the  long  run,  de- 
pends on  the  uprightness  of  the  citizen  so  strongly  laid  down. 
Assuredly,  the  Bible  talks  no  trash  about  the  rights  of  man ; 
but  it  insists  on  the  equality  of  duties,  on  the  liberty  to  bring 
about  that  righteousness  which  is  somewhat  different  from 
struggling  for  "  rights ;  "  on  the  fraternity  of  taking  thought 
for  one's  neighbor  as  for  one's  self. 

*  "  The  School  Boards :  What  they  can  do  and  what  they  may  do," 
1870.     Critiques  and  Addresses,  p.  51. 


40  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

So  far  as  such  equality,  liberty,  and  fraternity  are  included 
under  the  democratic  principles  which  assume  the  same 
names,  the  Bible  is  the  most  democratic  book  in  the  world. 
As  such  it  began,  through  the  heretical  sects,  to  undermine 
the  clerico-political  despotism  of  the  middle  ages,  almost  as 
soon  as  it  was  formed,  in  the  eleventh  century ;  Pope  and 
King  had  as  much  as  they  could  do  to  put  down  the  Albigen- 
ses  and  the  Waldenses  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centu- 
ries; the  Lollards  and  the  Hussites  gave  them  still  more 
trouble  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth ;  from  the  sixteenth 
century  onward,  the  Protestant  sects  have  favored  political 
freedom  in  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  they  have  re- 
fused to  acknowledge  any  ultimate  authority  save  that  of  the 
Bible. 

But  the  enormous  influence  which  has  thus  been  exerted 
by  the  Jewish  and  Christian  Scriptures  has  had  no  necessary 
connection  with  cosmogonies,  demonologies,  and  miraculous 
interferences.  Their  strength  lies  in  their  appeals,  not  to 
the  reason,  but  to  the  ethical  sense.  I  do  not  say  that  even 
the  highest  biblical  ideal  is  exclusive  of  others  or  needs  no 
supplement.  But  I  do  believe  that  the  human  race  is  not 
yet,  possibly  may  never  be,  in  a  position  to  dispense  with  it. 


THE  RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY. 

That  application  of  the  sciences  of  biology  and  geology, 
which  is  commonly  known  as  palaeontology,  took  its  origin 
in  the  mind  of  the  first  person  who,  finding  something  like  a 
shell,  or  a  bone,  naturally  imbedded  in  gravel  or  rock,  in- 
dulged in  speculations  upon  the  nature  of  this  thing  which 
he  had  dug  out — this  "  fossil " — and  upon  the  causes  which 
had  brought  it  into  such  a  position.  In  this  rudimentary 
form,  a  high  antiquity  may  safely  be  ascribed  to  palaeontolo- 
gy, inasmuch  as  we  know  that,  500  years  before  the  Christian 
era,  the  philosophic  doctrines  of  Xenophanes  were  influenced 
by  his  observations  upon  the  fossil  remains  exposed  in  the 
quarries  of  Syracuse.  From  this  time  forth  not  only  the 
philosophers,  but  the  poets,  the  historians,  the  geographers 
of  antiquity  occasionally  refer  to  fossils ;  and,  after  the  re- 
vival of  learning,  lively  controversies  arose  respecting  their 
real  nature.  But  hardly  more  than  two  centuries  have 
elapsed  since  this  fundamental  problem  was  first  exhaustively 
treated ;  it  was  only  in  the  last  century  that  the  archaeologi- 
cal value  of  fossils — their  importance,  I  mean,  as  records  of 
the  history  of  the  earth — was  fully  recognized  ;  the  first  ade- 
quate investigation  of  the  fossil  remains  of  any  large  group 
of  vertebrated  animals  is  to  be  found  in  Cuvier's  Reclierches 
sur  les  Ossemens  Fossiles,  completed  in  1822 ;  and,  so  mod- 
ern is  stratigraphical  palaeontology,  that  its  founder,  William 
Smith,  lived  to  receive  the  just  recognition  of  his  services  by 

the  award  of  the  first  Wollaston  Medal  in  1831. 
3 


42  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

But,  although  paleontology  is  a  comparatively  youthful 
scientific  speciality,  the  mass  of  materials  with  which  it  has 
to  deal  is  already  prodigious.  In  the  last  fifty  years  the 
number  of  known  fossil  remains  of  invertebrated  animals  has 
been  trebled  or  quadrupled.  The  work  of  interpretation  of 
vertebrate  fossils,  the  foundations  of  which  were  so  solidly 
laid  by  Cuvier,  was  carried  on,  with  wonderful  vigor  and 
success,  by  Agassiz  in  Switzerland,  by  Von  Meyer  in  Ger- 
many, and  last,  but  not  least,  by  Owen  in  this  country,  while, 
in  later  years,  a  multitude  of  workers  have  labored  in  the 
same  field.  In  many  groups  of  the  animal  kingdom  the 
number  of  fossil  forms  already  known  is  as  great  as  that  of 
the  existing  species.  In  some  cases  it  is  much  greater  ;  and 
there  are  entire  orders  of  animals  of  the  existence  of  which 
we  should  know  nothing  except  for  the  evidence  afforded  by 
fossil  remains.  With  all  this  it  may  be  safely  assumed  that, 
at  the  present  moment,  we  are  not  acquainted  with  a  tithe  of 
the  fossils  which  will  sooner  or  later  be  discovered.  If  we 
may  judge  by  the  profusion  yielded  within  the  last  few  years 
by  the  Tertiary  formations  of  North  America,  there  seems  to 
be  no  limit  to  the  multitude  of  Mammalian  remains  to  be 
expected  from  that  continent ;  and  analogy  leads  us  to  expect 
similar  riches  in  Eastern  Asia,  whenever  the  Tertiary  forma- 
tions of  that  region  are  as  carefully  explored.  Again,  we 
have  as  yet  almost  everything  to  learn  respecting  the  terres- 
trial population  of  the  Mesozoic  epoch — and  it  seems  as  if 
the  Western  territories  of  the  United  States  were  about  to 
prove  as  instructive  in  regard  to  this  point  as  they  have  in 
respect  of  tertiary  life.  My  friend  Professor  Marsh  informs 
me  that,  within  two  years,  remains  of  more  than  160  distinct 
individuals  of  mammals,  belonging  to  twenty  species  and  nine 
genera,  have  been  found  in  a  space  not  larger  than  the  floor 
of  a  good-sized  room ;  while  beds  of  the  same  age  have 
yielded  300  reptiles,  varying  in  size  from  a  length  of  60  feet 
or  80  feet  to  the  dimensions  of  a  rabbit. 

The  task  which  I  have  set  myself  to-night  is  to  endeavor 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  43 

to  lay  before  you,  as  briefly  as  possible,  a  sketch  of  the  suc- 
cessive steps  by  which  our  present  knowledge  of  the  facts  of 
palaeontology  and  of  those  conclusions  from  them  which  are 
indisputable,  has  been  attained ;  and  I  beg  leave  to  remind 
you,  at  the  outset,  that  in  attempting  to  sketch  the  progress 
of  a  branch  of  knowledge  to  which  innumerable  labors  have 
contributed,  my  business  is  rather  with  generalizations  than 
with  details.  It  is  my  object  to  mark  the  epochs  of  palaeon- 
tology, not  to  recount  all  the  events  of  its  history. 

That  which  I  just  now  called  the  fundamental  problem 
of  palaeontology,  the  question  which  has  to  be  settled  before 
any  other  can  be  profitably  discussed,  is  this,  What  is  the 
nature  of  fossils  ?  Are  they,  as  the  healthy  common  sense  of 
the  ancient  Greeks  appears  to  have  led  them  to  assume  with- 
out hesitation,  the  remains  of  animals  and  plants  ?  Or  are 
they,  as  was  so  generally  maintained  in  the  fifteenth,  six- 
teenth, and  seventeenth  centuries,  mere  figured  stones,  por- 
tions of  mineral  matter  which  have  assumed  the  forms  of 
leaves  and  shells  and  bones,  just  as  those  portions  of  mineral 
matter  which  we  call  crystals  take  on  the  form  of  regular 
geometrical  solids?  Or,  again,  are  they,  as  others  thought, 
the  products  of  the  germs  of  animals  and  of  the  seeds  of  plants 
which  have  lost  their  way,  as  it  were,  in  the  bowels  of  the 
earth,  and  have  achieved  only  an  imperfect  and  abortive  de- 
velopment? It  is  easy  to  sneer  at  our  ancestors  for  being 
disposed  to  reject  the  first  in  favor  of  one  or  other  of  the  last 
two  hypotheses ;  but  it  is  much  more  profitable  to  try  to  dis- 
cover why  they,  who  were  really  not  one  whit  less  sensible 
persons  than  our  excellent  selves,  should  have  been  led  to  en- 
tertain views  which  strike  us  as  absurd.  The  belief  in  what 
is  erroneously  called  spontaneous  generation,  that  is  to  say, 
in  the  development  of  living  matter  out  of  mineral  matter, 
apart  from  the  agency  of  pre-existing  living  matter,  as  an 
ordinary  occurrence  at  the  present  day — which  is  still  held 
by  some  of  us,  was  universally  accepted  as  an  obvious  truth 
by  them.    They  could  point  to  the  arborescent  forms  assumed 


44  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

by  hoar-frost  and  by  sundry  metallic  minerals  as  evidence  of 
the  existence  in  nature  of  a  "  plastic  force  "  competent  to  en- 
able inorganic  matter  to  assume  the  form  of  organized  bodies. 
Then,  as  every  one  who  is  familiar  with  fossils  knows,  they 
present  innumerable  gradations  from  shells  and  bones  which 
exactly  resemble  the  recent  objects,  to  masses  of  mere  stone 
which,  however  accurately  they  repeat  the  outward  form  of 
the  organic  body,  have  nothing  else  in  common  with  it ;  and, 
thence,  to  mere  traces  and  faint  impressions  in  the  continu- 
ous substance  of  the  rock.  What  we  now  know  to  be  the 
results  of  the  chemical  changes  which  take  place  in  the 
course  of  fossilization,  by  which  mineral  is  substituted  for 
organic  substance,  might,  in  the  absence  of  such  knowledge, 
be  fairly  interpreted  as  the  expression  of  a  process  of  devel- 
opment in  the  opposite  direction — from  the  mineral  to  the 
organic.  Moreover,  in  an  age  when  it  would  have  seemed 
the  most  absurd  of  paradoxes  to  suggest  that  the  general  level 
of  the  sea  is  constant,  while  that  of  the  solid  land  fluctuates 
up  and  down  through  thousands  of  feet  in  a  secular  ground 
swell,  it  may  well  have  appeared  far  less  hazardous  to  con- 
ceive that  fossils  are  sports  of  nature  than  to  accept  the  neces- 
sary alternative,  that  all  the  inland  regions  and  highlands,  in 
the  rocks  of  which  marine  shells  had  been  found,  had  once 
been  covered  by  the  ocean.  It  is  not  so  surprising,  therefore* 
as  it  may  at  first  seem,  that  although  such  men  as  Leonardo 
da  Vinci  and  Bernard  Palissy  took  just  views  of  the  nature 
of  fossils,  the  opinion  of  the  majority  of  their  contemporaries 
set  strongly  the  other  way ;  nor  even  that  error  maintained 
itself  long  after  the  scientific  grounds  of  the  true  interpreta- 
tion of  fossils  had  been  stated,  in  a  manner  that  left  nothing 
to  be  desired,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  person  who  rendered  this  good  service  to  palaeontology 
was  Nicolas  Steno,  professor  of  anatomy  in  Florence,  though 
a  Dane  by  birth.  Collectors  of  fossils  at  that  day  were  famil- 
iar with  certain  bodies  termed  "  glossopetrae,"  and  speculation 
was  rife  as  to  their  nature.     In  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  45 

teenth  century,  Fabio  Colonna  had  tried  to  convince  his  col- 
leagues of  the  famous  Accademia  dei  Lincei  that  the  glosso- 
petrjfi  were  merely  fossil  sharks'  teeth,  but  his  arguments 
made  no  impression.  Fifty  years  later,  Steno  reopened  the 
question,  and,  by  dissecting  the  head  of  a  shark  and  pointing 
out  the  very  exact  correspondence  of  its  teeth  with  the  glos- 
sopetrse,  left  no  rational  doubt  as  to  the  origin  of  the  latter. 
Thus  far,  the  work  of  Steno  went  little  further  than  that  of 
Colonna,  but  it  fortunately  occurred  to  him  to  think  out  the 
whole  subject  of  the  interpretation  of  fossils,  and  the  result 
of  his  mediations  was  the  publication,  in  1669,  of  a  little 
treatise  with  the  very  quaint  title  of  De  Solido  intra  Solidum 
naturaliter  contento.  The  general  course  of  Steno's  argu- 
ment may  be  stated  in  a  few  words.  Fossils  are  solid  bodies 
which,  by  some  natural  process,  have  come  to  be  contained 
within  other  solid  bodies,  namely,  the  rocks  in  which  they 
are  imbedded ;  and  the  fundamental  problem  of  palaeontology, 
stated  generally,  is  this  :  Given  a  body  endowed  with  a  certain 
shape  and  produced  in  accordance  with  natural  laws,  to  find 
in  that  body  itself  the  evidence  of  the  place  and  manner  of 
its  production."*  The  only  way  of  solving  this  problem  is 
by  the  application  of  the  axiom  that  "  like  effects  imply  like 
causes,"  or  as  Steno  puts  it,  in  reference  to  this  particular 
case,  that  "  bodies  which  are  altogether  similar  have  been 
produced  in  the  same  way."  f  Hence,  since  the  glossopetras 
are  altogether  similar  to  sharks'  teeth,  they  must  have  been 
produced  by  sharklike  fishes ;  and  since  many  fossil  shells 
correspond,  down  to  the  minutest  details  of  structure,  with 
the  shells  of  existing  marine  or  freshwater  animals,  they  must 
have  been  produced  by  similar  animals ;  and  the  like  reason- 
ing is  applied  by  Steno  to  the  fossil  bones  of  vertebrated  ani- 

*  De  Solido  intra  Solidum,  p.  5. — "  Dato  corpore  certa  figura  prae- 
dito  et  juxta  leges  naturae  producto,  in  ipso  corpore  argumenta  invenire 
locum  et  modum  productionis  detegentia." 

f  "  Corpora  sibi  invicem  omnino  similia  simili  etiam  modo  products 
sunt." 


46  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

malsj  whether  aquatic  or  terrestrial.  To  the  obvious  objec- 
tion that  many  fossils  are  not  altogether  similar  to  their 
living  analogues,  differing  in  substance  while  agreeing  in 
form,  or  being  mere  hollows  or  impressions,  the  surfaces  of 
which  are  figured  in  the  same  way  as  those  of  animal  or  vege- 
table organisms,  Steno  replies  by  pointing  out  the  changes 
which  take  place  in  organic  remains  imbedded  in  the  earth, 
and  how  their  solid  substance  may  be  dissolved  away  entirely, 
or  replaced  by  mineral  matter,  until  nothing  is  left  of  the 
original  but  a  cast,  an  impression,  or  a  mere  trace  of  its  con- 
tours. The  principles  of  investigation  thus  excellently  stated 
and  illustrated  by  Steno  in  1669,  are  those  which  have,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  guided  the  researches  of  palaeon- 
tologists ever  since.  Even  that  feat  of  palaeontology  which 
has  so  powerfully  impressed  the  popular  imagination,  the 
reconstruction  of  an  extinct  animal  from  a  tooth  or  a  bone, 
is  based  upon  the  simplest  imaginable  application  of  the  logic 
of  Steno.  A  moment's  consideration  will  show,  in  fact,  that 
Steno's  conclusion  that  the  glossopetraa  are  sharks'  teeth  im- 
plies the  reconstruction  of  an  animal  from  its  tooth.  It  is 
equivalent  to  the  assertion  that  the  animal  of  which  the  glos- 
sopetrae  are  relics  had  the  form  and  organization  of  a  shark ; 
that  it  had  a  skull,  a  vertebral  column,  and  limbs  similar  to 
those  which  are  characteristic  of  this  group  of  fishes ;  that  its 
heart,  gills,  and  intestines  presented  the  peculiarities  which 
those  of  all  sharks  exhibit ;  nay,  even  that  any  hard  parts 
which  its  integument  contained  were  of  a  totally  different 
character  from  the  scales  of  ordinary  fishes.  These  conclu- 
sions are  as  certain  as  any  based  upon  probable  reasonings 
can  be.  And  they  are  so,  simply  because  a  very  large  experi- 
ence justifies  us  in  believing  that  teeth  of  this  particular  form 
and  structure  are  invariably  associated  with  the  peculiar  or- 
ganization of  sharks,  and  are  never  found  in  connection  with 
other  organisms.  Why  this  should  be  we  are  not  at  present 
in  a  position  even  to  imagine ;  we  must  take  the  fact  as  an 
empirical  law  of  animal  morphology,  the  reason  of  which 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  47 

may  possibly  be  one  day  found  in  the  history  of  the  evolution 
of  the  shark  tribe,  but  for  which  it  is  hopeless  to  seek  for  an 
explanation  in  ordinary  physiological  reasonings.  Every  one 
practically  acquainted  with  palaeontology  is  aware  that  it  is 
not  every  tooth,  nor  every  bone,  which  enables  us  to  form 
a  judgment  of  the  character  of  the  animal  to  which  it  be- 
longed ;  and  that  it  is  possible  to  possess  many  teeth,  and 
even  a  large  portion  of  the  skeleton  of  an  extinct  animal,  and 
yet  be  unable  to  reconstruct  its  skull  or  its  limbs.  It  is  only 
when  the  tooth  or  bone  presents  peculiarities,  which  we  know 
by  previous  experience  to  be  characteristic  of  a  certain  group, 
that  we  can  safely  predict  that  the  fossil  belonged  to  an  ani- 
mal of  the  same  group.  Any  one  who  finds  a  cow's  grinder 
may  be  perfectly  sure  that  it  belonged  to  an  animal  which 
had  two  confplete  toes  on  each  foot  and  ruminated ;  any  one 
who  finds  a  horse's  grinder  may  be  as  sure  that  it  had  one 
complete  toe  on  each  foot  and  did  not  ruminate ;  but  if  rumi- 
nants and  horses  were  extinct  animals  of  which  nothing  but 
the  grinders  had  ever  been  discovered,  no  amount  of  physio- 
logical reasoning  could  have  enabled  us  to  reconstruct  either 
animal,  still  less  to  have  divined  the  wide  differences  between 
the  two.  Cuvier,  in  the  Discours  sur  les  Revolutions  de  la 
Surface  du  Globe,  strangely  credits  himself,  and  has  ever 
since  been  credited  by  others,  with  the  invention  of  a  new 
method  of  palasontological  research.  But  if  you  will  turn  to 
the  Becherches  sur  les  Ossemens  Fossiles  and  watch  Cuvier, 
not  speculating,  but  working,  you  will  find  that  his  method 
is  neither  more  nor  less  than  that  of  Steno.  If  he  was  able 
to  make  his  famous  prophecy  from  the  jaw  which  lay  upon 
the  surface  of  a  block  of  stone  to  the  pelvis  of  the  same  ani- 
mal which  lay  hidden  in  it,  it  was  not  because  either  he,  or 
any  one  else,  knew,  or  knows,  why  a  certain  form  of  jaw  is, 
as  a  rule,  constantly  accompanied  by  the  presence  of  mar- 
supial bones,  but  simply  because  experience  has  shown  that 
these  two  structures  are  co-ordinated. 

The  settlement  of  the  nature  of  fossils  led  at  once  to  the 


48  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

next  advance  of  palaeontology,  viz.,  its  application  to  the  de- 
ciphering of  the  history  of  the  earth.  When  it  was  admitted 
that  fossils  are  remains  of  animals  and  plants,  it  followed 
that,  in  so  far  as  they  resemble  terrestrial,  or  freshwater,  ani- 
mals and  plants,  they  are  evidences  of  the  existence  of  land, 
or  fresh  water ;  and,  in  so  far  as  they  resemble  marine  organ- 
isms, they  are  evidences  of  the  existence  of  the  sea  at  the 
time  at  which  they  were  parts  of  actually  living  animals  and 
plants.  Moreover,  in  the  absence  of  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary, it  must  be  admitted  that  the  terrestrial  or  the  marine 
organisms  implied  the  existence  of  land  or  sea  at  the  place 
in  which  they  were  found  while  they  were  yet  living.  In 
fact,  such  conclusions  were  immediately  drawn  by  everybody, 
from  the  time  of  Xenophanes  downward,  who  believed  that 
fossils  were  really  organic  remains.  Steno  discusses  their 
value  as  evidence  of  repeated  alteration  of  marine  and  ter- 
restrial conditions  upon  the  soil  of  Tuscany  in  a  manner 
worthy  of  a  modern  geologist.  The  speculations  of  De  Mail- 
let  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  turn  upon  fos- 
sils; and  Buifon  follows  him  very  closely  in  those  two  re- 
markable works,  the  Theorie  de  la  Terre  and  the  Epoques  de 
la  Nature,  with  which  he  commenced  and  ended  his  career 
as  a  naturalist. 

The  opening  sentences  of  the  Epoques  de  la  Nature  show 
us  how  fully  Buffon  recognized  the  analogy  of  geological 
with  archaeological  inquiries.  "  As  in  civil  history  we  con- 
sult deeds,  seek  for  coins,  or  decipher  antique  inscriptions  in 
order  to  determine  the  epochs  of  human  revolutions  and  fix 
the  date  of  moral  events ;  so,  in  natural  history,  we  must 
search  the  archives  of  the  world,  recover  old  monuments  from 
the  bowels  of  the  earth,  collect  their  fragmentary  remains, 
and  gather  into  one  body  of  evidence  all  the  signs  of  physical 
change  which  may  enable  us  to  look  back  upon  the  different 
ages  of  nature.  It  is  our  only  means  of  fixing  some  points  in 
the  immensity  of  space,  and  of  setting  a  certain  number  of 
waymarks  along  the  eternal  path  of  time.' 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  49 

Buffon  enumerates  five  classes  of  these  monuments  of  the 
past  history  of  the  earth,  and  they  are  all  facts  of  palaeon- 
tology. In  the  first  place,  he  says,  shells  and  other  marine 
productions  are  found  all  over  the  surface  and  in  the  interior 
of  the  dry  land  ;  and  all  calcareous  rocks  are  made  up  of 
their  remains.  Secondly,  a  great  many  of  these  shells  which 
are  found  in  Europe  are  not  now  to  be  met  with  in  the  ad- 
jacent seas ;  and,  in  the  slates  and  other  deep-seated  deposits, 
there  are  remains  of  fishes  and  of  plants  of  which  no  species 
now  exist  in  our  latitudes,  and  which  are  either  extinct,  or 
exist  only  in  more  northern  climates.  Thirdly,  in  Siberia 
and  in  other  northern  regions  of  Europe  and  of  Asia,  bones 
and  teeth  of  elephants,  rhinoceroses,  and  hippopotamuses 
occur  in  such  numbers  that  these  animals  must  once  have 
lived  and  multiplied  in  those  regions,  although  at  the  present 
day  they  are  confined  to  southern  climates.  The  deposits  in 
which  these  remains  are  found  are  superficial,  while  those 
which  contain  shells  and  other  marine  remains  lie  much 
deeper.  Fourthly,  tusks  and  bones  of  elephants  and  hippo- 
potamuses are  found  not  only  in  the  northern  regions  of  the 
old  world,  but  also  in  those  of  the  new  world,  although,  at 
present,  neither  elephants  nor  hippopotamuses  occur  in 
America.  Fifthly,  in  the  middle  of  the  continents,  in  regions 
most  remote  from  the  sea,  we  find  an  infinite  number  of 
shells,  of  which  the  most  part  belong  to  animals  of  those 
kinds  which  still  exist  in  southern  seas,  but  of  which 
many  others  have  no  living  analogues  ;  so  that  these  species 
appear  to  be  lost,  destroyed  by  some  unknown  cause.  It 
is  needless  to  inquire  how  far  these  statements  are  strictly 
accurate ;  they  are  sufficiently  so  to  justify  Buffon's  con- 
clusions that  the  dry  land  was  once  beneath  the  sea;  that 
the  formation  of  the  fossiliferous  rocks  must  have  occupied  a 
vastly  greater  lapse  of  time  than  that  traditionally  ascribed 
to  the  age  of  the  earth  ;  that  fossil  remains  indicate  different 
climatal  conditions  to  have  obtained  in  former  times,  and 
especially  that  the  polar  regions  were   once  warmer ;  that 


50  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

many  species  of  animals  and  plants  have  become  extinct ; 
and  that  geological  change  has  had  something  to  do  with 
geographical  distribution. 

But  these  propositions  almost  constitute  the  frame-work 
of  palaeontology.  In  order  to  complete  it  but  one  addition 
was  needed,  and  that  was  made,  in  the  last  years  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  by  William  Smith,  whose  work  comes  so  near 
our  own  times  that  many  living  men  may  have  been  per- 
sonally acquainted  with  him.  This  modest  land-surveyor, 
whose  business  took  him  into  many  parts  of  England,  profited 
by  the  peculiarly  favorable  conditions  offered  by  the  arrange- 
ment of  our  secondary  strata  to  make  a  careful  examination 
and  comparison  of  their  fossil  contents  at  different  points  of 
the  large  area  over  which  they  extend.  The  result  of  his 
accurate  and  widely-extended  observations  was  to  establish 
the  important  truth  that  each  stratum  contains  certain  fossils 
which  are  peculiar  to  it ;  and  that  the  order  in  which  the 
strata,  characterized  by  these  fossils,  are  superimposed  one 
upon  the  other  is  always  the  same.  This  most  important 
generalization  was  rapidly  verified  and  extended  to  all  parts 
of  the  world  accessible  to  geologists ;  and  now  it  rests  upon 
such  an  immense  mass  of  observations  as  to  be  one  of  the 
best  established  truths  of  natural  science.  To  the  geologist 
the  discovery  was  of  infinite  importance,  as  it  enabled  him  to 
identify  rocks  of  the  same  relative  age,  however  their  con- 
tinuity might  be  interrupted  or  their  composition  altered. 
But  to  the  biologist  it  had  a  still  deeper  meaning,  for  it  dem- 
onstrated that,  throughout  the  prodigious  duration  of  time 
registered  by  the  fossiliferous  rocks,  the  living  population  of 
the  earth  had  undergone  continual  changes,  not  merely  by 
the  extinction  of  a  certain  number  of  the  species  which  had 
at  first  existed,  but  by  the  continual  generation  of  new 
species,  and  the  no  less  constant  extinction  of  old  ones. 

Thus  the  broad  outlines  of  palaeontology,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
the  common  property  of  both  the  geologist  and  the  biologist, 
were  marked  out  at  the  close  oi  the  last  century.     In  tracing 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  51 

its  subsequent  progress  I  must  confine  rr^self  to  the  province 
of  biology,  and,  indeed,  to  the  influence  of  palaeontology 
upon  zoological  morphology.  And  I  accept  this  limitation 
the  more  willingly  as  the  no  less  important  topic  of  the 
bearing  of  geology  and  of  palaeontology  upon  distribution  has 
been  luminously  treated  in  the  address  of  the  President  of 
the  Geographical  Section.* 

The  succession  of  the  species  of  animals  and  plants  in  time 
being  established,  the  first  question  which  the  zoologist  or 
the  botanist  had  to  ask  himself  was,  What  is  the  relation  of 
these  successive  species  one  to  another  ?  And  it  is  a  curious 
circumstance  that  the  most  important  event  in  the  history  of 
palaeontology  which  immediately  succeeded  William  Smith's 
generalization  was  a  discovery  which,  could  it  have  been 
rightly  appreciated  at  the  time,  would  have  gone  far  toward 
suggesting  the  answer,  which  was  in  fact  delayed  for  more 
than  half  a  century.  I  refer  to  Cuvier's  investigation  of  the 
Mammalian  fossils  yielded  by  the  quarries  in  the  older 
tertiary  rocks  of  Montmartre,  among  the  chief  results  of 
which  was  the  bringing  to  light  of  two  genera  of  extinct 
hoofed  quadrupeds,  the  Anoplotherium  and  the  Palcso- 
therium.  The  rich  materials  at  Cuvier's  disposition  enabled 
him  to  obtain  a  full  knowledge  of  the  osteology  and  of  the 
dentition  of  these  two  forms,  and  consequently  to  compare 
their  structure  critically  with  that  of  existing  hoofed  animals. 
The  effect  of  this  comparison  was  to  prove  that  the  Anoplo- 
therium, though  it  presented  many  points  of  resemblance 
with  the  pigs  on  the  one  hand  and  with  the  ruminants  on 
the  other,  differed  from  both  to  such  an  extent  that  it  could 
find  a  place  in  neither  group.  In  fact,  it  held,  in  some  re- 
spects, an  intermediate  position,  tending  to  bridge  over  the 
interval  between  these  two  groups,  which  in  the  existing 
fauna  are  so  distinct.  In  the  same  way,  the  Palceotherium 
tended  to  connect    forms    so    different  as  the  tapir,   the 


[Sir  J.  D.  Hooker.] 


52  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

rhinoceros,  and  the  horse.  Subsequent  investigations  have 
brought  to  light  a  variety  of  facts  of  the  same  order,  the 
most  curious  and  striking  of  which  are  those  which  prove 
the  existence,  in  the  mesozoic  epoch,  of  a  series  of  forms 
intermediate  between  birds  and  reptiles — two  classes  of 
vertebrate  animals  which  at  present  appear  to  be  more  widely- 
separated  than  any  others.  Yet  the  interval  between  them 
is  completely  filled,  in  the  mesozoic  fauna,  by  birds  which 
have  reptilian  characters  on  the  one  side,  and  reptiles  which 
have  ornithic  characters  on  the  other.  So  again,  while  the 
group  of  fishes  termed  ganoids  is  at  the  present  time  so 
distinct  from  that  of  the  dipnoi,  or  mudfishes,  that  they  have 
been  reckoned  as  distinct  orders,  the  Devonian  strata  present 
us  with  forms  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  say  with  certainty 
whether  they  are  dipnoi  or  whether  they  are  ganoids. 

Agassiz's  long  and  elaborate  researches  upon  fossil  fishes, 
published  between  1833  and  1842,  led  him  to  suggest  the 
existence  of  another  kind  of  relation  between  ancient  and 
modern  forms  of  life.  He  observed  that  the  oldest  fishes 
present  many  characters  which  recall  the  embryonic  con- 
ditions of  existing  fishes ;  and  that,  not  only  among  fishes, 
but  in  several  groups  of  the  invertebrata  which  have  a  long 
palaeontological  history,  the  latest  forms  are  more  modified, 
more  specialized,  than  the  earlier.  The  fact  that  the  denti- 
tion of  the  older  tertiary  ungulate  and  carnivorous  mammals 
is  always  complete,  noticed  by  Professor  Owen,  illustrated  the 
same  generalization. 

Another  no  less  suggestive  observation  was  made  by  Mr. 
Darwin,  whose  personal  investigations  during  the  voyage  of 
the  Beagle  led  him  to  remark  upon  the  singular  fact,  that 
the  fauna,  which  immediately  precedes  that  at  present  ex- 
isting in  any  geographical  province  of  distribution,  presents 
the  same  peculiarities  as  its  successor.  Thus  in  South 
America  and  in  Australia,  the  later  tertiary  or  quaternary 
fossils  show  that  the  fauna  which  immediately  preceded  that 
of  the  present  day  was,  in  the  one  case,  as  much  character- 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALAEONTOLOGY.  53 

ized  by  edentates  and,  in  the  other,  by  marsupials  as  it  is  now, 
although  the  species  of  the  older  are  largely  different  from 
those  of  the  newer  fauna. 

However  clearly  these  indications  might  point  in  one 
direction,  the  question  of  the  exact  relation  of  the  successive 
forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  could  be  satisfactorily 
settled  only  in  one  way ;  namely,  by  comparing,  stage  by 
stage,  the  series  of  forms  presented  by  one  and  the  same  type 
throughout  a  long  space  of  time.  Within  the  last  few  years 
this  has  been  done  fully  in  the  case  of  the  horse,  less 
completely  in  the  case  of  the  other  principal  types  of  the 
ungulata  and  of  the  carnivora ;  and  all  these  investigations 
tend  to  one  general  result,  namely,  that  in  any  given  series,  the 
sucessive  members  of  that  series  present  a  gradually  increas- 
ing specialization  of  structure.  That  is  to  say,  if  any  such 
mammal  at  present  existing  has  specially  modified  and  reduced 
limbs  or  dentition  and  complicated  brain,  its  predecessors  in 
time  show  less  and  less  modification  and  reduction  in  limbs 
and  teeth  and  a  less  highly  developed  brain.  The  labors  of 
Gaudry,  Marsh,  and  Cope  furnish  abundant  illustrations  of 
this  law  from  the  marvelous  fossil  wealth  of  Pikermi  and  the 
vast  uninterupted  series  of  tertiary  rocks  in  the  territories  of 
North  America. 

I  will  now  sum  up  the  results  of  this  sketch  of  the  rise 
and  progress  of  palaeontology.  The  whole  fabric  of  palaeon- 
tology is  based  upon  two  propositions  :  the  first  is,  that  fossils 
are  the  remains  of  animals  and  plants ;  and  the  second  is, 
that  the  stratified,  rocks  in  which  they  are  found  are  sedi- 
mentary deposits  ;  and  each  of  these  propositions  is  founded 
upon  the  same  axiom,  that  like  effects  imply  like  causes.  If 
there  is  any  cause  competent  to  produce  a  fossil  stem,  or  shell, 
or  bone,  except  a  living  being,  then  palaeontology  has  no 
foundation ;  if  the  stratification  of  the  rocks  is  not  the  effect 
of  such  causes  as  at  present  produce  stratification,  we  have 
no  means  of  judging  of  the  duration  of  past  time,  or  of  the 


54  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

order  in  which  the  forms  of  life  have  succeeded  one  another. 
But  if  these  two  propositions  are  granted,  there  is  no  escape, 
as  it  appears  to  me,  from  three  very  important  conclusions. 
The  first  is  that  living  matter  has  existed  upon  the  earth  for 
a  vast  length  of  time,  certainly  for  millions  of  years.  The 
second  is  that,  during  this  lapse  of  time,  the  forms  of  living 
matter  have  undergone  repeated  changes,  the  effect  of  which 
has  been  that  the  animal  and  vegetable  population,  at  any 
period  of  the  earth's  history,  contains  some  species  which 
did  not  exist  at  some  antecedent  period,  and  others  which 
ceased  to  exist  at  some  subsequent  period.  The  third  is  that, 
in  the  case  of  many  groups  of  mammals  and  some  of  reptiles, 
in  which  one  type  can  be  followed  through  a  considerable 
extent  of  geological  time,  the  series  of  different  forms  by 
which  the  type  is  represented,  at  successive  intervals  of  this 
time,  is  exactly  such  as  it  would  be,  if  they  had  been  pro- 
duced by  the  gradual  modification  of  the  earliest  forms  of 
the  series.  These  are  facts  of  the  history  of  the  earth 
guaranteed  by  as  good  evidence  as  any  facts  in  civil  history. 
Hitherto  I  have  kept  carefully  clear  of  all  the  hypotheses 
to  which  men  have  at  various  times  endeavored  to  fit  the 
facts  of  palaeontology,  or  by  which  they  have  endeavored  to 
connect  as  many  of  these  facts  as  they  happen  to  be  ac- 
quainted with.  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  a  profitable 
employment  of  our  time  to  discuss  conceptions  which  doubt- 
less have  had  their  justification  and  even  their  use,  but  which 
are  now  obviously  incompatible  with  the  well-ascertained 
truths  of  palaeontology.  At  present  these  truths  leave  room 
for  only  two  hypotheses.  The  first  is  that,  in  the  course  of 
the  history  of  the  earth,  innumerable  species  of  animals  and 
plants  have  come  into  existence,  independently  of  one 
another,  innumerable  times.  This,  of  course,  implies  either 
that  spontaneous  generation  on  the  most  astounding  scale 
and  of  animals  such  as  horses  and  elephants,  has  been  going 
on,  as  a  natural  process,  through  all  the  time  recorded  by  the 
f ossilif erous  rocks ;  or  it  necessitates,  the  belief  in  innumer- 


RISE  AND  PROGRESS  OF  PALEONTOLOGY.  55 

able  acts  of  creation  repeated  innumerable  times.  The 
other  hypothesis  is,  that  the  successive  species  of  animals  and 
plants  have  arisen,  the  later  by  the  gradual  modification  of 
the  earlier.  This  is  the  hypothesis  of  evolution ;  and  the 
palaeontological  discoveries  of  the  last  decade  are  so  com- 
pletely in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  this  hypoth- 
esis that,  if  it  had  not  existed,  the  palaeontologist  would  have 
had  to  invent  it. 

I  have  always  had  a  certain  horror  of  presuming  to  set  a 
limit  upon  the  possibilities  of  things.  Therefore  I  will  not 
venture  to  say  that  it  is  impossible  that  the  multitudinous 
species  of  animals  and  plants  may  have  been  produced,  one 
separately  from  the  other,  by  spontaneous  generation ;  nor 
that  it  is  impossible  that  they  should  have  been  independ- 
ently originated  by  an  endless  succession  of  miraculous 
creative  acts.  But  I  must  confess  that  both  these  hypotheses 
strike  me  as  so  astoundingly  improbable,  so  devoid  of  a 
shred  of  either  scientific  or  traditional  support,  that  even 
if  there  were  no  other  evidence  than  that  of  palaeontology 
in  its  favor,  I  should  feel  compelled  to  adopt  the  h}7pothesis 
of  evolution.  Happily,  the  future  of  palaeontology  is  inde- 
pendent of  all  hypothetical  considerations.  Fifty  years  hence, 
whoever  undertakes  to  record  the  progress  of  palaeontology 
will  note  the  present  time  as  the  epoch  in  which  the  law  of 
succession  of  the  forms  of  the  higher  animals  was  determined 
by  the  observation  of  palaeontological  facts.  He  will  point  out 
that,  just  as  Steno  and  as  Cuvier  were  enabled  from  their 
knowledge  of  the  empirical  laws  of  coexistence  of  the  parts  of 
animals  to  conclude  from  a  part  to  the  whole,  so  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  law  of  succession  of  forms  empowered  their  suc- 
cessors to  conclude,  from  one  or  two  terms  of  such  a  succession, 
to  the  whole  series ;  and  thus  to  divine  the  existence  of  forms 
of  life,  of  which,  perhaps,  no  trace  remains,  at  epochs  of  in- 
conceivable remoteness  in  the  past. 


II 

THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS  AND  THE  IN- 
TERPRETERS OF  NATURE. 

Our  fabulist  warns  "those  who  in  quarrels  interpose" 
of  the  fate  which  is  probably  in  store  for  them ;  and,  in 
venturing  to  place  myself  between  so  powerful  a  controver- 
sialist as  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the  eminent  divine  whom  he 
assaults  with  such  vigor  in  the  last  number  of  this  Review,* 
I  am  fully  aware  that  I  run  great  danger  of  verifying  Gays' 
prediction.  Moreover,  it  is  quite  possible  that  my  zeal  in 
offering  aid  to  a  combatant  so  extremely  well  able  to  take 
care  of  himself  as  M.  Reville  may  be  thought  to  savor  of  in- 
discretion. 

Two  considerations,  however,  have  led  me  to  face  the 
double  risk.  The  one  is  that  though,  in  my  judgment,  M. 
Reville  is  wholly  in  the  right  in  that  part  of  the  controversy 
to  which  I  propose  to  restrict  my  observations,  nevertheless 
he,  as  a  foreigner,  has  very  little  chance  of  making  the  truth 
prevail  with  Englishmen  against  the  authority  and  the 
dialectic  skill  of  the  greatest  master  of  persuasive  rhetoric 
among  English-speaking  men  of  our  time.  As  the  Queen's 
proctor  intervenes,  in  certain  cases,  between  two  litigants  in 
the  interests  of  justice,  so  it  may  be  permitted  me  to  inter- 
pose as  a  sort  of  uncommissioned  science  proctor.  My  second 
excuse  for  my  meddlesomeness  is,  that  important  questions  of 
natural  science — respecting  which  neither  of  the  combatants 

*  The  Nineteenth  Century. 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  57 

professes  to  speak  as  an  expert — are  involved  in  the  con- 
troversy ;  and  I  think  it  is  desirable  that  the  public  should 
know  what  it  is  that  natural  science  really  has  to  say  on 
these  topics,  to  the  best  belief  of  one  who  has  been  a  diligent 
student  of  natural  science  for  the  last  forty  years. 

The  original  Prolegomenes  de  Vhistoire  des  Religions  has 
not  come  in  my  way ;  but  I  have  read  the  translation  of  M. 
Reville's  work,  published  in  England  under  the  auspices  of 
Professor  Max  Muller,  with  very  great  interest.  It  puts 
more  fairly  and  clearly  than  any  book  previously  known  to 
me,  the  view  which  a  man  of  strong  religious  feelings,  but  at 
the  same  time  possessing  the  information  and  the  reasoning 
power  which  enable  him  to  estimate  the  strength  of  scientific 
methods  of  inquiry  and  the  weight  of  scientific  truth,  may  be 
expected  to  take  of  the  relation  between  science  and  religion. 

In  the  chapter  on  "  The  Primitive  Revelation  "  the  scien- 
tific worth  of  the  account  of  the  Creation  given  in  the  book 
of  Genesis  is  estimated  in  terms  which  are  as  unquestionably 
respectful  as,  in  my  judgment,  they  are  just ;  and,  at  the  end 
of  the  chapter  on  "  Primitive  Tradition,"  M.  Reville  ap- 
praises the  value  of  pentateuchal  anthropology  in  a  way 
which  I  should  have  thought  sure  of  enlisting  the  assent  of 
all  competent  judges,  even  if  it  were  extended  to  the  whole 
of  the  cosmogony  and  biology  of  Genesis  : — 

As,  however,  the  original  traditions  of  nations  sprang  up  in 
an  epoch  less  remote  than  our  own  from  the  primitive  life,  it  is 
indispensable  to  consult  them,  to  compare  them,  and  to  asso- 
ciate them  with  other  sources  of  information  which  are  availa- 
ble. From  this  point  of  view  the  traditions  recorded  in  Genesis 
possess,  in  addition  to  their  own  peculiar  charm,  a  value  of  the 
highest  order;  but  we  can  not  ultimately  see  in  them  more  than 
a  venerable  fragment,  well  deserving  attention,  of  the  great  gen- 
isis  of  mankind. 

Mr.  Gladstone  is  of  a  different  mind.  He  dissents  from 
M.  Reville's  views  respecting  the  proper  estimation  of  the 
pentateuchal  traditions,  no  less  than  he  does  from  his  inter- 


58  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

pretation  of  those  Homeric  myths  which  have  been  the  ob- 
ject of  his  own  special  study.  In  the  latter  case,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone tells  M.  Eeville  that  he  is  wrong  on  his  own  authority, 
to  which,  in  such  a  matter,  all  will  pay  due  respect :  in  the 
former,  he  affirms  himself  to  be  "  wholly  destitute  of  that 
kind  of  knowledge  which  carries  authority,"  and  his  rebuke 
is  administered  in  the  name  and  by  the  authority  of  natural 
science. 

An  air  of  magisterial  gravity  hangs  about  the  following 
passage : — 

But  the  question  is  not  here  of  a  lofty  poem,  or  a  skillfully 
constructed  narrative  :  it  is  whether  natural  science,  in  the  pa- 
tient exercise  of  its  high  calling  to  examine  facts,  finds  that  the 
works  of  God  cry  out  against  what  we  have  fondly  believed  to 
be  His  word  and  tell  another  tale;  or  whether,  in  this  nine- 
teenth century  of  Christian  progress,  hV  substantially  echoes 
back  the  majestic  sound,  which,  before  it  existed  as  a  pursuit, 
went  forth  into  all  lands. 

First,  looking  largely  at  the  latter  portion  of  the  narrative, 
which  describes  the  creation  of  living  organisms,  and  waiving 
details,  on  some  of  which  (as  in  v.  24)  the  Septuagint  seems  to 
vary  from  the  Hebrew,  there  is  a  grand  fourfold  division,  set 
forth  in  an  orderly  succession  of  times  as  follows  :  on  the  fifth 
day 

1.  The  water-population ; 

2.  The  air-population: 
and,  on  the  sixth  day, 

3.  The  land- population  of  animals ; 

4.  The  land-population  consummated  in  man. 

Now  this  same  fourfold  order  is  understood  to  have  been  so 
affirmed  in  our  time  by  natural  science,  that  it  may  be  taken  as 
a  demonstrated  conclusion  and  established  fact  (p.  698). 

"  Understood?"  By  whom?  I  can  not  bring  myself  to 
imagine  that  Mr.  Gladstone  has  made  so  solemn  and  author- 
itative a  statement  on  a  matter  of  this  importance  without 
due  inquiry — without  being  able  to  found  himself  upon  rec- 
ognized scientific  authority.     But  I  wish  he  had  thought  fit 


THE   INTERPRETERS   OF   GENESIS.  59 

to  name  the  source  from  whence  he  has  derived  his  informa- 
tion, as,  in  that  case,  I  could  have  dealt  with  his  authority, 
and  I  should  have  thereby  escaped  the  appearance  of  making 
an  attack  on  Mr.  Gladstone  himself,  which  is  in  every  way 
distasteful  to  me. 

For  I  can  meet  the  statement  in  the  last  paragraph  of 
the  above  citation  with  nothing  but  a  direct  negative.  If  I 
know  anything  at  all  about  the  results  attained  by  the  nat- 
ural science  of  our  time,  it  is  "  a  demonstrated  conclusion 
and  established  fact "  that  the  "  fourfold  order "  given  by 
Mr.  Gladstone  is  not  that  in  which  the  evidence  at  our  dis- 
posal tends  to  show  that  the  water,  air,  and  land-populations 
of  the  globe  have  made  their  appearance. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  told  that  Mr.  Gladstone  does  give  his 
authority — that  he  cites  Cuvier,  Sir  John  Herschel,  and  Dr. 
Whewell  in  support  of  his  case.  If  that  has  been  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's intention  in  mentioning  these  eminent  names,  I  may 
remark  that,  on  this  particular  question,  the  only  relevant 
authority  is  that  of  Cuvier.  But  great  as  Cuvier  was,  it  is 
to  be  remembered  that,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  incidentally  re- 
marks, he  can  not  now  be  called  a  recent  authority.  In  fact, 
he  has  been  dead  more  than  half  a  century ;  and  the  palaeon- 
tology of  our  day  is  related  to  that  of  his,  very  much  as  the 
geography  of  the  sixteenth  century  is  related  to  that  of  the 
fourteenth.  Since  1832,  when  Cuvier  died,  not  only  a  new 
world,  but  new  worlds,  of  ancient  life  have  been  discovered ; 
and  those  who  have  most  faithfully  carried  on  the  work  of 
the  chief  founder  of  palaeontology  have  done  most  to  invali- 
date the  essentially  negative  grounds  of  his  speculative  ad- 
herence to  tradition. 

If  Mr.  Gladstone's  latest  information  on  these  matters  is 
derived  from  the  famous  discourse  prefixed  to  the  Ossemens 
Fossiles,  I  can  understand  the  position  he  has  taken  up ;  if 
he  has  ever  opened  a  respectable  modern  manual  of  palaeon- 
tology, or  geology,  I  can  not.  For  the  facts  which  demolish 
his  whole  argument  are  of  the  commonest  notoriety.    But 


60  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

before  proceeding  to  consider  the  evidence  for  this  assertion 
we  must  be  clear  about  the  meaning  of  the  phraseology  em- 
ployed. 

I  apprehend  that  when  Mr.  Gladstone  uses  the  term 
"  water-population  "  he  means  those  animals  which  in  Gene- 
sis i.  21  (Eevised  Version)  are  spoken  of  as  "  the  great  sea 
monsters  and  every  living  creature  that  moveth,  which  the 
waters  brought  forth  abundantly,  after  their  kind."  And  I 
presume  that  it  will  be  agreed  that  whales  and  porpoises,  sea 
fishes,  and  the  innumerable  hosts  of  marine  invertebrated 
animals  are  meant  thereby.  So  "  air-population  "  must  be 
the  equivalent  of  "  fowl "  in  verse  20,  and  "  every  winged 
fowl  after  its  kind,"  verse  21.  I  suppose  I  may  take  it  for 
granted  that  by  "  fowl  "  we  have  here  to  understand  birds — 
at  any  rate  primarily.  Secondarily,  it  may  be  that  the  bats 
and  the  extinct  pterodactyles,  which "  were  flying  reptiles, 
come  under  the  same  head.  But  whether  all  insects  are 
"  creeping  things  "  of  the  land-population,  or  whether  flying 
insects  are  to  be  included  under  the  denomination  of  "  winged 
fowl,"  is  a  point  for  the  decision  of  Hebrew  exegetes.  Lastly, 
I  suppose  I  may  assume  that  "  land-population "  signifies 
"  the  cattle  "  and  "  the  beast  of  the  earth,"  and  "  every  creep- 
ing thing  that  creepeth  upon  the  earth,"  in  verses  25  and 
26 ;  presumably,  it  comprehends  all  kinds  of  terrestrial  ani- 
mals, vertebrate  and  invertebrate,  except  such  as  may  be 
comprised  under  the  head  of  the  "air-population." 

Now  what  I  want  to  make  clear  is  this :  that  if  the  terms 
"  water-population,"  "  air-population,"  and  "land-population" 
are  understood  in  the  senses  here  defined,  natural  science  has 
nothing  to  say  in  favor  of  the  proposition  that  they  succeeded 
one  another  in  the  order  given  by  Mr.  Gladstone ;  but  that, 
on  the  contrary,  all  the  evidence  we  possess  goes  to  prove 
that  they  did  not.  Whence  it  will  follow  that,  if  Mr.  Glad- 
stone has  interpreted  Genesis  rightly  (on  which  point  I  am 
most  anxious  to  be  understood  to  offer  no  opinion),  that  in- 
terpretation is  wholly  irreconcilable  with  the  conclusions  at 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  61 

present  accepted  by  the  interpreters  of  nature — with  every- 
thing that  can  be  called  "  a  demonstrated  conclusion  and  es- 
tablished fact "  of  natural  science.  And  be  it  observed  that 
I  am  not  here  dealing  with  a  question  of  speculation,  but 
with  a  question  of  fact. 

Either  the  geological  record  is  sufficiently  complete  to 
afford  us  a  means  of  determining  the  order  in  which  animals 
have  made  their  appearance  on  the  globe  or  it  is  not.  If  it 
is,  the  determination  of  that  order  is  little  more  than  a  mere 
matter  of  observation;  if  it  is  not,  then  natural  science 
neither  affirms  nor  refutes  the  "  fourfold  order,"  but  is 
simply  silent. 

The  series  of  the  fossiliferous  deposits,  which  contain  the 
remains  of  the  animals  which  have  lived  on  the  earth  in  past 
ages  of  its  history,  and  which  can  alone  afford  the  evidence 
required  by  natural  science  of  the  order  of  appearance  of 
their  different  species,  may  be  grouped  in  the  manner  shown 
in  the  left-hand  column  of  the  following  table,  the  oldest 
being  at  the  bottom : 

Formations  First  known  appearance  of 

Quaternary. 
Pliocene. 
Miocene. 

Eocene    .        .        .    Vertebrate  azr-population  (Bats). 
Cretaceous. 
Jurassic  .        .    Vertebrate    air  -  population    (Birds     and 

Pterodactyles). 
Triassic. 

Upper  Palaeozoic. 
Middle  Palaeozoic  .    Vertebrate  land  -  population    (Amphibia, 

Reptilia  [?]). 
Lower  Palaeozoic. 

Silurian  .        .    Vertebrate  wafer-population  (Fishes). 

Invertebrate  air  and  ZcmcZ-population 
(Flying  Insects  and  Scorpions). 
Cambrian        .    Invertebrate     water  -  population     (much 

earlier,  if  Eozoon  is  animal). 


62  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

In  the  right-hand  column  I  have  noted  the  group  of 
strata  in  which,  according  to  our  present  information,  the 
land,  air,  and  watfer-populations  respectively  appear  for  the 
first  time ;  and  in  consequence  of  the  ambiguity  about  the 
meaning  of  "  fowl,"  I  have  separately  indicated  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  bats,  birds,  flying  reptiles,  and  flying  insects.  It 
will  be  observed  that,  if  "  fowl "  means  only  "  bird,"  or  at 
most  flying  vertebrate,  then  the  first  certain  evidence  of  the 
latter,  in  the  Jurassic  epoch,  is  posterior  to  the  first  appear- 
ance of  truly  terrestrial  Amphibia,  and  possibly  of  true  rep- 
tiles, in  the  Carboniferous  epoch  (Middle  Palaeozoic)  by  a 
prodigious  interval  of  time. 

The  water-population  of  vertebrated  animals  first  appears 
in  the  Upper  Silurian.*  Therefore,  if  we  found  ourselves 
on  vertebrated  animals  and  take  "  fowl "  to  mean  birds  only, 
or,  at  most,  flying  vertebrates,  natural  science  says  that  the 
order  of  succession  was  water,  land,  and  air-population,  and 
not — as  Mr.  Gladstone,  founding  himself  on  Genesis,  says — 
water,  air,  land-population.  If  a  chronicler  of  Greece  affirmed 
that  the  age  of  Alexander  preceded  that  of  Pericles  and  im- 
mediately succeeded  that  of  the  Trojan  war,  Mr.  Gladstone 
would  hardly  say  that  this  order  is  "  understood  to  have  been 
so  affirmed  by  historical  science  that  it  may  be  taken  as  a 
demonstrated  conclusion  and  established  fact."  Yet  natural 
science  "affirms  "  his  "  fourfold  order "  to  exactly  the  same 
extent — neither  more  nor  less. 

Suppose,  however,  that  "  fowl "  is  to  be  taken  to  include 
flying  insects.  In  that  case,  the  first  appearance  of  an  air- 
population  must  be  shifted  back  for  long  ages,  recent  dis- 
covery having  shown  that  they  occur  in  rocks  of  Silurian 
age.  Hence  there  might  still  have  been  hope  for  the  four- 
fold order,  were  it  not  that  the  fates  unkindly  determined 
that  scorpions — "  creeping  things  that  creep  on  the  earth  " 
par  excellence — turned  up  in  Silurian  strata  nearly  at  the 

*  [Earlier,  if  more  recent  announcements  are  correct.] 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OP  GENESIS.  £3 

same  time.  So  that,  if  the  word  in  the  original  Hebrew 
translated  "  fowl  "  should  really  after  all  mean  "cockroach  " 
— and  I  have  great  faith  in  the  elasticity  of  that  tongue  in 
the  hands  of  biblical  exegetes — the  order  primarily  suggested 
by  the  existing  evidence — 

2.  Land  and  air-population  ; 

1.  Water-population; 
and  Mr.  Gladstone's  order — 

3.  Land-population; 

2.  Air-population; 

1.  Water-population  ; 
can  by  no  means  be  made  to  coincide.     As  a  matter  of  fact, 
then,  the  statement  so  confidently  put  forward  turns  out  to 
be  devoid  of  foundation  and  in  direct  contradiction  of  the 
evidence  at  present  at  our  disposal.* 

If,  stepping  beyond  that  which  may  be  learned  from  the 
facts  of  the  successive  appearance  of  the  forms  of  animal  life 
upon  the  surface  of  the  globe,  in  so  far  as  they  are  yet  made 
known  to  us  by  natural  science,  we  apply  our  reasoning 
faculties  to  the  task  of  finding  out  what  those  observed  facts 
mean,  the  present  conclusions  of  the  interpreters  of  nature 

*  It  may  be  objected  that  I  have  not  put  the  case  fairly,  inasmuch 
as  the  solitary  insect's  wing  which  was  discovered  twelve  months  ago 
in  Silurian  rocks,  and  which  is,  at  present,  the  sole  evidence  of  insects 
older  than  the  Devonian  epoch,  came  from  strata  of  Middle  Silurian 
age,  and  is  therefore  older  than  the  scorpions  which,  within  the  last 
two  years,  have  been  found  in  Upper  Silurian  strata  in  Sweden, 
Britain,  and  the  United  States.  But  no  one  who  comprehends  the 
nature  of  the  evidence  afforded  by  fossil  remains  would  venture  to  say 
that  the  non-discovery  of  scorpions  in  the  Middle  Silurian  strata,  up 
to  this  time,  affords  any  more  ground  for  supposing  that  they  did  not 
exist,  than  the  non-discovery  of  flying  insects  in  the  Upper  Silurian 
strata,  up  to  this  time,  throws  any  doubt  on  the  certainty  that  they 
existed,  which  is  derived  from  the  occurrence  of  the  wing  in  the  Middle 
Silurian.  In  fact,  I  have  stretched  a  point  in  admitting  that  these 
fossils  afford  a  colorable  pretext  for  the  assumption  that  the  land  and 
air-population  were  of  contemporaneous  origin. 


64  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

appear  to  be  no  less  directly  in  conflict  with  those  of  the 
latest  interpreter  of  Genesis. 

Mr.  Gladstone  appears  to  admit  that  there  is  some  truth 
in  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  and  indeed  places  it  under  very 
high  patronage. 

I  contend  that  evolution  in  its  highest  form  has  not  been  a 
thing  heretofore  unknown  to  history,  to  philosophy,  or  to  the- 
ology. I  contend  that  it  was  before  the  mind  of  Saint  Paul 
when  he  taught  that  in  the  fullness  of  the  time  God  sent  forth 
His  Son,  and  of  Eusebius  when  he  wrote  the  Preparation  for 
the  Gospel,  and  of  Augustine  when  he  composed  the  City  of 
God  (p.  706). 

Has  any  one  ever  disputed  the  contention,  thus  solemnly 
enunciated,  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution  was  not  invented 
the  day  before  yesterday?  Has  any  one  ever  dreamed  of 
claiming  it  as  a  modern  innovation  ?  Is  there  any  one  so 
ignorant  of  the  history  of  philosophy  as  to  be  unaware  that 
it  is  one  of  the  forms  in  which  speculation  embodied  itself 
long  before  the  time  either  of  the  Bishop  of  Hippo  or  of  the 
Apostle  to  the  Gentiles  ?  Is  Mr.  Gladstone,  of  all  people  in 
the  world,  disposed  to  ignore  the  founders  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy, to  say  nothing  of  Indian  sages  to  whom  evolution  was  a 
familiar  notion  ages  before  Paul  of  Tarsus  was  born  ?  But  it 
is  ungrateful  to  cavil  at  even  the  most  oblique  admission  of 
the  possible  value  of  one  of  those  affirmations  of  natural 
science  which  really  may  be  said  to  be  "  a  demonstrated  con- 
clusion and  established  fact."  I  note  it  with  pleasure,  if 
only  for  the  purpose  of  introducing  the  observation  that,  if 
there  is  any  truth  whatever  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution  as 
applied  to  animals,  Mr.  Gladstone's  gloss  on  Genesis  in  the 
following  passage  is  hardly  happy  : — 

God  created 

(a)  The  water-population ; 

(6)  The  air-population. 

And  they  receive  His  benediction  (v.  20-23). 


THE   INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  65 

6.  Pursuing  this  regular  progression  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher,  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  the  text  now  gives  us 
the  work  of  the  sixth  "  day,"  which  supplies  the  land-popula- 
tion, air  and  water  having  been  already  supplied  (pp.  695,  696). 

The  gloss  to  which  I  refer  is  the  assumption  that  the 
"  air-population  "  forms  a  term  in  the  order  of  progression 
from  lower  to  higher,  from  simple  to  complex — the  place  of 
which  lies  between  the  water-population  below  and  the  land- 
population  above — and  I  speak  of  it  as  a  "  gloss,"  because  the 
pentateuchal  writer  is  nowise  responsible  for  it. 

But  it  is  not  true  that  the  air-population,  as  a  whole,  is 
"  lower  "  or  less  "  complex  "  than  the  land-population.  On 
the  contrary,  every  beginner  in  the  study  of  animal  morphol- 
ogy is  aware  that  the  organization  of  a  bat,  of  a  bird,  or  of  a 
pterodactyle  presupposes  that  of  a  terrestrial  quadruped ;  and 
that  it  is  intelligible  only  as  an  extreme  modification  of  the 
organization  of  a  terrestrial  mammal  or  reptile.  In  the  same 
way  winged  insects  (if  they  are  to  be  counted  among  the 
"air-population")  presuppose  insects  which  were  wingless, 
and,  therefore,  as  "  creeping  things,"  were  part  of  the  land- 
population.  Thus  theory  is  as  much  opposed  as  observation 
to  the  admission  that  natural  science  indorses  the  succession 
of  animal  life  which  Mr.  Gladstone  finds  in  Genesis.  On  the 
contrary,  a  good  many  representatives  of  natural  science 
would  be  prepared  to  say,  on  theoretical  grounds  alone,  that 
it  is  incredible  that  the  "air-population"  should  have  ap- 
peared before  the  "  land-population  " — and  that,  if  this  asser- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  Genesis,  it  merely  demonstrates  the 
scientific  worthlessness  of  the  story  of  which  it  forms  a  part. 

Indeed,  we  may  go  further.  It  is  not  even  admissible  to 
say  that  the  water-population,  as  a  whole,  appeared  before 
the  air  and  the  land-populations.  According  to  the  Author- 
ized Version,  Genesis  especially  mentions,  among  the  animals 
created  on  the  fifth  day,  "  great  whales,"  in  place  of  which 
the  Eevised  Version  reads  "great  sea  monsters."  Far  be  it 
from  me  to  give  an  opinion  which  rendering  is  right,  or 


66  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

whether  either  is  right.  All  I  desire  to  remark  is,  that  if 
whales  and  porpoises,  dugongs  and  manatees,  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  members  of  the  water-population  (and  if  they  are 
not,  what  animals  can  claim  the  designation?),  then  that 
much  of  the  water-population  has,  as  certainly,  originated 
later  than  the  land-population  as  bats  and  birds  have.  For 
I  am  not  aware  that  any  competent  judge  would  hesitate  to 
admit  that  the  organization  of  these  animals  shows  the  most 
obvious  signs  of  their  descent  from  terrestrial  quadrupeds. 

A  similar  criticism  applies  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  assumption 
that,  as  the  fourth  act  of  that  "  orderly  succession  of  times  " 
enunciated  in  Genesis,  "  the  land-population  consummated 
in  man." 

If  this  means  simply  that  man  is  the  final  term  in  the 
evolutional  series  of  which  he  forms  a  part,  I  do  not  suppose 
that  any  objection  will  be  raised  to  that  statement  on  the 
part  of  students  of  natural  science.  But  if  the  pentateuchal 
author  goes  further  than  this,  and  intends  to  say  that  which 
is  ascribed  to  him  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  I  think  natural  science 
will  have  to  enter  a  caveat.  It  is  not  by  any  means  certain 
that  man — I  mean  the  species  Homo  sapiens  of  zoological 
terminology — has  "  consummated "  the  land-population  in 
the  sense  of  appearing  at  a  later  period  of  time  than  any 
other.  Let  me  make  my  meaning  clear  by  an  example. 
From  a  morphological  point  of  view,  our  beautiful  and  use- 
ful contemporary — I  might  almost  call  him  colleague — the 
horse  {Equus  caballus),  is  the  last  term  of  the  evolutional 
series  to  which  he  belongs,  just  as  Homo  sapiens  is  the  last 
term  of  the  series  of  which  he  is  a  member.  If  I  want  to 
know  whether  the  species  Equus  caballus  made  its  appear- 
ance on  the  surface  of  the  globe  before  or  after  Homo  sapiens, 
deduction  from  known  laws  does  not  help  me.  There  is  no 
reason,  that  I  know  of,  why  one  should  have  appeared  sooner 
or  later  than  the  other.  If  I  turn  to  observation,  I  find 
abundant  remains  of  Equus  caballus  in  Quaternary  strata, 
perhaps  a  little  earlier.     The  existence  of  Homo  sapiens  in 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF   GENESIS.  67 

the  Quaternary  epoch  is  also  certain.  Evidence  has  been  ad- 
duced in  favor  of  man's  existence  in  the  Pliocene,  or  even  in 
the  Miocene  epoch.  It  does  not  satisfy  me ;  but  I  have  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  the  fact  may  be  so,  nevertheless.  In- 
deed, I  think  it  is  quite  possible  that  further  research  will 
show  that  Homo  sapiens  existed,  not  only  before  Equus  ca- 
ballus,  but  before  many  other  of  the  existing  forms  of  animal 
life ;  so  that,  if  all  the  species  of  animals  have  been  separately 
created,  man,  in  this  case,  would  by  no  means  be  the  "  con- 
summation "  of  the  land-population. 

I  am  raising  no  objection  to  the  position  of  the  fourth 
term  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  "  order  " — on  the  facts,  as  they 
stand,  it  is  quite  open  to  any  one  to  hold,  as  a  pious  opin- 
ion, that  the  fabrication  of  man  was  the  acme  and  final 
achievement  of  the  process  of  peopling  the  globe.  But  it 
must  not  be  said  that  natural  science  counts  this  opinion 
among  her  "  demonstrated  conclusions  and  established  facts," 
for  there  would  be  just  as  much,  or  as  little,  reason  for 
ranging  the  contrary  opinion  among  them. 

It  may  seem  superfluous  to  add  to  the  evidence  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  been  utterly  misled  in  supposing  that  his 
interpretation  of  Genesis  receives  any  support  from  natural 
science.  But  it  is  as  well  to  do  one's  work  thoroughly 
while  one  is  about  it ;  and  I  think  it  may  be  advisable  to 
point  out  that  the  facts,  as  they  are  at  present  known,  not 
only  refute  Mr.  Gladstone's  interpretation  of  Genesis  in  de- 
tail, but  are  opposed  to  the  central  idea  on  which  it  appears 
to  be  based. 

There  must  be  some  position  from  which  the  reconcilers 
of  science  and  Genesis  will  not  retreat,  some  central  idea 
the  maintenance  of  which  is  vital  and  its  refutation  fatal. 
Even  if  they  now  allow  that  the  words  "  the  evening  and 
the  morning "  have  not  the  least  reference  to  a  natural 
day,  but  mean  a  period  of  any  number  of  millions  of  years 
that  may  be  necessary ;  even  if  they  are  driven  to  admit 
that  the  word  "  creation,"  which  so  many  millions  of  pious 


68  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Jews  and  Christians  have  held,  and  still  hold,  to  mean  a 
sudden  act  of  the  Diety,  signifies  a  process  of  gradual  evolu- 
tion of  one  species  from,  another,  extending  through  im- 
measurable time ;  even  if  they  are  willing  to  grant  that  the 
asserted  coincidence  of  the  order  of  Nature  with  the  "  four- 
fold order,"  ascribed  to  Genesis  is  an  obvious  error  instead 
of  an  established  truth ;  they  are  surely  prepared  to  make  a 
last  stand  upon  the  conception  which  underlies  the  whole, 
and  which  constitutes  the  essence  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  "  four- 
fold division,  set  forth  in  an  orderly  succession  of  times." 
It  is,  that  the  animal  species  which  compose  the  water- 
population,  the  air-population,  and  the  land-population  re- 
spectively, originated  during  three  distinct  and  successive 
periods  of  time,  and  only  during  those  periods  of  time. 

This  statement  appears  to  me  to  be  the  interpretation 
of  Genesis  which  Mr.  Gladstone  supports,  reduced  to  its 
simplest  expression.  "  Period  of  time  "  is  substituted  for 
"  day  " ;  "  originated  "  is  substituted  for  "  created  " ;  and 
"any  order  required"  for  that  adopted  by  Mr.  Gladstone. 
It  is  necessary  to  make  this  proviso,  for  if  "  day  "  may  mean 
a  few  million  years,  and  "  creation  "  may  mean  evolution, 
then  it  is  obvious  that  the  order  (1)  water-population,  (2) 
air-population,  (3)  land-population,  may  also  mean  (1) 
water-population,  (2)  land-population,  (3)  air-population ; 
and  it  would  be  unkind  to  bind  down  the  reconcilers  to 
this  detail  when  one  has  parted  with  so  many  others  to 
oblige  them. 

But  even  this  sublimated  essence  of  the  pentateuchal 
doctrine  (if  it  be  such)  remains  as  discordant  with  natural 
science  as  ever. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  species  composing  any  one  of  the 
three  populations  originated  during  any  one  of  three  suc- 
cessive periods  of  time,  and  not  at  any  other  of  these. 

Undoubtedly,  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable  that 
animal  life  appeared  first  under  aquatic  conditions ;  that  ter- 
restrial forms  appeared  later,  and  flying  animals  only  after 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  (59 

land  animals ;  but  it  is,  at  the  same  time,  testified  by  all  the 
evidence  we  possess,  that  the  great  majority,  if  not  the  whole, 
of  the  primordial  species  of  each  division  have  long  since 
died  out  and  have  been  replaced  by  a  vast  succession  of  new 
forms.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  animal  species,  as  distinct 
as  those  which  now  compose  our  water,  land,  and  air-popula- 
tions, have  come  into  existence  and  died  out  again,  through- 
out the  aeons  of  geological  time  which  separate  us  from  the 
lower  Palaeozoic  epoch,  when,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  our 
present  evidence  of  the  existence  of  such  distinct  populations 
commences.  If  the  species  of  animals  have  all  been  separately 
created,  then  it  follows  that  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acts  of 
creative  energy  have  occurred,  at  intervals,  throughout  the 
whole  time  recorded  by  the  fossiliferous  rocks ;  and,  during 
the  greater  part  of  that  time,  the  "  creation  "  of  the  members 
of  the,  water,  land,  and  air-populations  must  have  gone  on 
contemporaneously. 

If  we  represent  the  water,  land,  and  air-populations  by  a, 
Z>,  and  c  respectively,  and  take  vertical  succession  on  the  page 
to  indicate  order  in  time,  then  the  following  schemes  will 
roughly  shadow  forth  the  contrast  I  have  been  endeavoring 
to  explain : — 

Genesis  fas  interpretated  by  Nature  (as  interpreted  by 

Mr.  Gladstone).  natural  science). 

bbb  cxa\bu 

c  c  c  c  a?bx 

a  a  a  b  a1  b 

a  a  a 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  there  is  only  one  resource  left  for  those 
modern  representatives  of  Sisyphus,  the  reconcilers  of  Genesis 
with  science ;  and  it  has  the  advantage  of  being  founded  on 
a  perfectly  legitimate  appeal  to  our  ignorance.  It  has  been 
seen  that,  on  any  interpretation  of  the  terms  water-popula- 
tion and  land-population,  it  must  be  admitted  that  inverte- 
brate representatives  of  these  populations  existed  during  the 
lower  Palaeozoic  epoch.    No  evolutionist  can  hesitate  to  ad- 


70  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

mifc  that  other  land  animals  (and  possibly  vertebrates  among 
them)  may  have  existed  during  that  time,  of  the  history  of 
which  we  know  so  little;  and,  further,  that  scorpions  are 
animals  of  such  high  organization  that  it  is  highly  probable 
their  existence  indicates  that  of  a  long  antecedent  land-popu- 
lation of  a  similar  character. 

Then,  since  the  land-population  is  said  not  to  have  been 
created  until  the  sixth  day,  it  necessarily  follows  that  the 
evidence  of  the  order  in  which  animals  appeared  must  be 
sought  in  the  record  of  those  older  Palaeozoic  times  in  which 
only  traces  of  the  water-population  have  as  yet  been  dis- 
covered. 

Therefore,  if  any  one  chooses  to  say  that  the  creative  work 
took  place  in  the  Cambrian  or  Laurentian  epoch,  in  exactly 
that  manner  which  Mr.  Gladstone  does,  and  natural  science 
does  not,  affirm,  natural  science  is  not  in  a  position  to  dis- 
prove the  accuracy  of  the  statement.  Only  one  can  not  have 
one's  cake  and  eat  it  too,  and  such  safety  from  the  contradic- 
tion of  science  means  the  forfeiture  of  her  support. 

Whether  the  account  of  the  work  of  the  first,  second,  and 
third  days  in  Genesis  would  be  confirmed  by  the  demonstra- 
tion of  the  truth  of  the  nebular  hypothesis;  whether  it  is  cor- 
roborated by  what  is  known  of  the  nature  and  probable  rela- 
tive antiquity  of  the  heavenly  bodies ;  whether,  if  the  Hebrew 
word  translated  "  firmament "  in  the  Authorized  Version  really 
means  "  expanse,"  the  assertion  that  the  waters  are  partly 
under  this  "  expanse  "  and  partly  above  it  would  be  any  more 
confirmed  by  the  ascertained  facts  of  physical  geography  and 
meteorology  than  it  was  before ;  whether  the  creation  of  the 
whole  vegetable  world,  and  especially  of  "  grass,  herb  yielding 
seed  after  its  kind,  and  tree  bearing  fruit,"  before  any  kind 
of  animal,  is  "  affirmed  "  by  the  apparently  plain  teaching  of 
botanical  palaeontology,  that  grasses  and  fruit-trees  originated 
long  subsequently  to  animals — all  these  are  questions  which, 
if  I  mistake  not,  would  be  answered  decisively  in  the  nega- 
tive by  those  who  are  specially  conversant  with  the  sciences 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  71 

involved.  And  it  must  be  recollected  that  the  issue  raised 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  is  not  whether,  by  some  effort  of  ingenuity, 
the  pentateuchal  story  can  be  shown  to  be  not  disprovable  by 
scientific  knowledge,  but  whether  it  is  supported  thereby. 

There  is  nothing,  then,  in  the  criticisms  of  Dr.  Reville  but 
what  rather  tends  to  confirm  than  to  impair  the  old-fashioned 
belief  that  there  is  a  revelation  in  the  book  of  Genesis  (p.  694). 

The  form  into  which  Mr.  Gladstone  has  thought  fit  to 
throw  this  opinion  leaves  me  in  doubt  as  to  its  substance.  I 
do  not  understand  how  a  hostile  criticism  can,  under  any 
circumstances,  tend  to  confirm  that  which  it  attacks.  If, 
however,  Mr.  Gladstone  merely  means  to  express  his  per- 
sonal impression,  "  as  one  wholly  destitute  of  that  kind  of 
knowledge  which  carries  authority,"  that  he  has  destroyed 
the  value  of  these  criticisms,  I  have  neither  the  wish  nor  the 
right  to  attempt  to  disturb  his  faith.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
may  be  permitted  to  state  my  own  conviction  that,  so  far  as 
natural  science  is  involved,  M.  Reville's  observations  retain 
the  exact  value  they  possessed  before  Mr.  Gladstone  attacked 
them. 

Trusting  that  I  have  now  said  enough  to  secure  the  au- 
thor of  a  wise  and  moderate  disquisition  upon  a  topic  which 
seems  fated  to  stir  unwisdom  and  fanaticism  to  their  depths, 
a  fuller  measure  of  justice  than  has  hitherto  been  accorded 
to  him,  I  retire  from  my  self-appointed  championship,  with 
the  hope  that  I  shall  not  hereafter  be  called  upon  by  M. 
Reville  to  apologize  for  damage  done  to  his  strong  case  by 
imperfect  or  impulsive  advocacy.  But,  perhaps,  I  may  be 
permitted  to  add  a  word  or  two,  on  my  own  account,  in  ref- 
erence to  the  great  question  of  the  relations  between  science 
and  religion ;  since  it  is  one  about  which  I  have  thought  a 
good  deal  ever  since  I  ha^e  been  able  to  think  at  all ;  and 
about  which  I  have  ventured  to  express  my  views  publicly, 
more  than  once,  in  the  course  of  the  last  thirty  years. 


72  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

The  antagonism  between  science  and  religion,  about  which 
we  hear  so  much,  appears  to  me  to  be  purely  factitious — fab- 
ricated, on  the  one  hand,  by  short-sighted  religious  people 
who  confound  a  certain  branch  of  science,  theology,  with  re- 
ligion ;  and,  on  the  other,  by  equally  short-sighted  scientific 
people  who  forget  that  science  takes  for  its  province  only  that 
which  is  susceptible  of  clear  intellectual  comprehension ;  and 
that,  outside  the  boundaries  of  that  province,  they  must  be 
content  with  imagination,  with  hope,  and  with  ignorance. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  moral  and  intellectual  life  of  the 
civilized  nations  of  Europe  is  the  product  of  that  interaction, 
sometimes  in  the  way  of  antagonism,  sometimes  in  that  of 
profitable  interchange,  of  the  Semitic  and  the  Aryan  races, 
which  commenced  with  the  dawn  of  history,  when  Greek 
and  Phoenician  came  in  contact,  and  has  been  continued  by 
Carthaginian  and  Eoman,  by  Jew  and  Gentile,  down  to  the 
present  day.  Our  art  (except,  perhaps,  music)  and  our  sci- 
ence are  the  contributions  of  the  Arvan ;  but  the  essence  of 
our  religion  is  derived  from  the  Semite.  In  the  eighth  cent- 
ury b.  c,  in  the  heart  of  a  world  of  idolatrous  polytheists, 
the  Hebrew  prophets  put  forth  a  conception  of  religion  which 
appears  to  me  to  be  as  wonderful  an  inspiration  of  genius  as 
the  art  of  Pheidias  or  the  science  of  Aristotle. 

"  And  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly, 
and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  " 

If  any  so-called  religion  takes  away  from  this  great  saying 
of  Micah,  I  think  it  wantonly  mutilates,  while,  if  it  adds 
thereto,  I  think  it  obscures,  the  perfect  ideal  of  religion. 

But  what  extent  of  knowledge,  what  acuteness  of  scientific 
criticism,  can  touch  this,  if  any  one  possessed  of  knowledge, 
or  acuteness,  could  be  absurd  enough  to  make  the  attempt  ? 
Will  the  progress  of  research  prove  that  justice  is  worthless 
and  mercy  hateful ;  will  it  ever  soften  the  bitter  contrast  be- 
tween our  actions  and  our  aspirations ;  or  show  us  the  bounds 
of  the  universe,  and  bid  us  say,  Go  to,  now  we  comprehend 
the  infinite  ?    A  faculty  of  wrath  lay  in  those  ancient  Israel- 


THE  INTERPRETERS  OF  GENESIS.  73 

ites,  and  surely  the  prophet's  staff  would  have  made  swift 
acquaintance  with  the  head  of  the  scholar  who  had  asked 
Micah  whether,  peradventure,  the  Lord  further  required  of 
him  an  implicit  belief  in  the  accuracy  of  the  cosmogony  of 
Genesis ! 

What  we  are  usually  pleased  to  call  religion  nowadays  is, 
for  the  most  part,  Hellenized  Judaism ;  and,  not  unfrequently, 
the  Hellenic  element  carries  with  it  a  mighty  remnant  of  old- 
world  paganism  and  a  great  infusion  of  the  worst  and  weak- 
est products  of  Greek  scientific  speculation ;  while  fragments 
of  Persian  and  Babylonian,  or  rather  Accadian,  mythology 
burden  the  Judaic  contribution  to  the  common  stock. 

The  antagonism  of  science  is  not  to  religion,  but  to  the 
heathen  survivals  and  the  bad  philosophy  under  which  re- 
ligion herself  is  often  well-nigh  crushed.  And,  for  my  part, 
I  trust  that  this  antagonism  will  never  cease ;  but  that,  to  the 
end  of  time,  true  science  will  continue  to  fulfill  one  of  her 
most  beneficent  functions,  that  of  relieving  men  from  the 
burden  of  false  science  which  is  imposed  upon  them  in  the 
name  of  religion. 

This  is  the  work  that  M.  Eeville  and  men  such  as  he  are 
doing  for  us ;  this  is  the  work  which  his  opponents  are  en- 
deavoring, consciously  or  unconsciously,  to  hinder. 


III. 

MR.   GLADSTONE  AND   GENESIS. 

Ik  controversy,  as  in  courtship,  the  good  old  rule  to  be 
off  with  the  old  before  one  is  on  with  the  new,  greatly  com- 
mends itself  to  my  sense  of  expediency.  And,  therefore,  it 
appears  to  me  desirable  that  I  should  preface  such  observa- 
tions as  I  may  have  to  offer  upon  the  cloud  of  arguments 
(the  relevancy  of  which  to  the  issue  which  I  had  ventured  to 
raise  is  not  always  obvious)  put  forth  by  Mr.  Gladstone  in 
the  January  number  of  this  Review,*  by  an  endeavor  to 
make  clear  to  such  of  our  readers  as  have  not  had  the  advan- 
tage of  a  forensic  education  the  present  net  result  of  the  dis- 
cussion. 

I  am  quite  aware  that,  in  undertaking  this  task,  I  run  all 
the  risks  to  which  the  man  who  presumes  to  deal  judicially 
with  his  own  cause  is  liable.  But  it  is  exactly  because  I  do 
not  shun  that  risk,  but,  rather,  earnestly  desire  to  be  judged 
by  him  who  cometh  after  me,  provided  that  he  has  the 
knowledge  and  impartiality  appropriate  to  a  judge,  that  I 
adopt  my  present  course. 

In  the  article  on  "  The  Dawn  of  Creation  and  Worship," 
it  will  be  remembered  that  Mr.  Gladstone  unreservedly  com- 
mits himself  to  three  propositions.  The  first  is  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  writer  of  the  Pentateuch,  the  "  water-population," 
the  "  air-population,"  and  the  "  land-population "  of  the 
globe  were  created  successively,  in  the  order  named.  In  the 
second  place,  Mr.  Gladstone  authoritatively  asserts  that  this 

*  [The  Nineteenth  Century.'] 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  75 

(as  part  of  his  "  fourfold  order  ")  has  been  "  so  affirmed  in 
our  time  by  natural  science,  that  it  may  be  taken  as  a  demon- 
strated conclusion  and  established  fact."  In  the  third  place, 
Mr.  Gladstone  argues  that  the  fact  of  this  coincidence  of  the 
pentateuchal  story  with  the  results  of  modern  investigation 
makes  it  "  impossible  to  avoid  the  conclusion,  first,  that  either 
this  writer  was  gifted  with  faculties  passing  all  human  expe- 
rience, or  else  his  knowledge  was  divine."  And  having  set- 
tled to  his  own  satisfaction  that  the  first  "  branch  of  the  al- 
ternative is  truly  nominal  and  unreal,"  Mr.  Gladstone  con- 
tinues, "  so  stands  the  plea  for  a  revelation  of  truth  from 
God,  a  plea  only  to  be  met  by  questioning  its  possibility  " 
(p.  697). 

I  am  a  simple-minded  person,  wholly  devoid  of  subtlety 
of  intellect,  so  that  I  willingly  admit  that  there  may  be 
depths  of  alternative  meaning  in  these  propositions  out  of  all 
soundings  attainable  by  my  poor  plummet.  Still  there  are  a 
good  many  people  who  suffer  under  a  like  intellectual  limita- 
tion ;  and,  for  once  in  my  life,  I  feel  that  I  have  the  chance 
of  attaining  that  position  of  a  representative  of  average  opin- 
ion which  appears  to  be  the  modern  ideal  of  a  leader  of  men, 
when  I  make  free  confession  that,  after  turning  the  matter 
over  in  my  mind,  with  all  the  aid  derived  from  a  careful  con- 
sideration of  Mr.  Gladstone's  reply,  I  can  not  get  away  from 
my  original  conviction  that,  if  Mr.  Gladstone's  second  propo- 
sition can  be  shown  to  be  not  merely  inaccurate,  but  directly 
contradictory  of  facts  known  to  every  one  who  is  acquainted 
with  the  elements  of  natural  science,  the  third  proposition 
collapses  of  itself. 

And  it  was  this  conviction  which  led  me  to  enter  upon 
the  present  discussion.  I  fancied  that  if  my  respected  clients, 
the  people  of  average  opinion  and  capacity,  could  once  be  got 
distinctly  to  conceive  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  views  as  to  the 
proper  method  of  dealing  with  grave  and  difficult  scientific 
and  religious  problems  had  permitted  him  to  base  a  solemn 
"  plea  for  a  revelation  of  truth  from  God  "  upon  an  error  as 


76  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

to  a  matter  of  fact,  from  which  the  intelligent  perusal  of  a 
manual  of  palaeontology  would  have  saved  him,  I  need  not 
trouble  myself  to  occupy  their  time  and  attention  with 
further  comments  upon  his  contribution  to  apologetic  litera- 
ture. It  is  for  others  to  judge  whether  I  have  efficiently 
carried  out  my  project  or  not.  It  certainly  does  not  count 
for  much  that  I  should  be  unable  to  find  any  flaw  in  my  own 
case,  but  I  think  it  counts  for  a  good  deal  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
appears  to  have  been  equally  unable  to  do  so.  He  does,  in- 
deed, make  a  great  parade  of  authorities,  and  I  have  the 
greatest  respect  for  those  authorities  whom  Mr.  Gladstone 
mentions.  If  he  will  get  them  to  sign  a  joint  memorial  to 
the  effect  that  our  present  palseontological  evidence  proves 
that  birds  appeared  before  the  "  land-population  "  of  terres- 
trial reptiles,  I  shall  think  it  my  duty  to  reconsider  my  posi- 
tion— but  not  till  then. 

It  will  be  observed  that  I  have  cautiously  used  the  word 
"  appears  "  in  referring  to  what  seems  to  me  to  be  absence  of 
any  real  answer  to  my  criticisms  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  reply. 
For  I  must  honestly  confess  that,  notwithstanding  long  and 
painful  strivings  after  clear  insight,  I  am  still  uncertain 
whether  Mr.  Gladstone's  "  Defense  "  means  that  the  great 
"  plea  for  a  revelation  from  God  "  is  to  be  left  to  perish  in 
the  dialectic  desert ;  or  whether  it  is  to  be  withdrawn  under 
the  protection  of  such  skirmishers  as  are  available  for  cover- 
ing retreat. 

In  particular,  the  remarkable  disquisition  which  covers 
pages  11  to  14  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  last  contribution  has 
greatly  exercised  my  mind.  Socrates  is  reported  to  have  said 
of  the  works  of  Heraclitus  that  he  who  attempted  to  compre- 
hend them  should  be  a  "  Delian  swimmer,"  but  that  for  his 
part,  what  he  could  understand  was  so  good  that  he  was  dis- 
posed to  believe  in  the  excellence  of  that  which  he  found  un- 
intelligible. In  endeavoring  to  make  myself  master  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  meaning  in  these  pages,  I  have  often  been  over- 
come by  a  feeling  analogous  to  that  of  Socrates,  but  not  quite 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  77 

the  same.  That  which  I  do  understand,  in  fact,  has  appeared 
to  me  so  very  much  the  reverse  of  good,  that  I  have  some- 
times permitted  myself  to  doubt  the  value  of  that  which  I  do 
not  understand. 

In  this  part  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  reply,  in  fact,  I  find  noth- 
ing of  which  the  bearing  upon  my  arguments  is  clear  to  me, 
except  that  which  relates  to  the  question  whether  reptiles,  so 
far  as  they  are  represented  by  tortoises  and  the  great  majority 
of  lizards  and  snakes,  which  are  land  animals,  are  creeping 
things  in  the  sense  of  the  pentateuchal  writer  or  not. 

I  have  every  respect  for  the  singer  of  the  Song  of  the 
Three  Children  (whoever  he  may  have  been) ;  I  desire  to  cast 
no  shadow  of  doubt  upon,  but,  on  the  contrary,  marvel  at, 
the  exactness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  information  as  to  the  con- 
siderations which  "  affected  the  method  of  the  Mosaic  writer  " ; 
nor  do  I  venture  to  doubt  that  the  inconvenient  intrusion  of 
these  contemptible  reptiles — "  a  family  fallen  from  great- 
ness "  (p.  14),  a  miserable  decayed  aristocracy  reduced  to 
mere  "  skulkers  about  the  earth  "  (ilid.) — in  consequence, 
apparently,  of  difficulties  about  the  occupation  of  land  aris- 
ing out  of  the  earth-hunger  of  their  former  serfs,  the  mam- 
mals— into  an  apologetic  argument,  which  otherwise  would 
run  quite  smoothly,  is  in  every  way  to  be  deprecated.  Still, 
the  wretched  creatures  stand  there,  importunately  demanding 
notice ;  and,  however  different,  may  be  the  practice  in  that 
contentious  atmosphere  with  which  Mr.  Gladstone  expresses 
and  laments  his  familiarity,  in  the  atmosphere  of  science  it 
really  is  of  no  avail  whatever  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  facts,  or  to 
try  to  bury  them  out  of  sight  under  a  tumulus  of  rhetoric. 
That  is  my  experience  of  "  the  Elysian  regions  of  Science," 
wherein  it  is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  think  that  a  man  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  intimate  knowledge  of  English  life,  during  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century,  believes  my  philosophic  existence  to 
have  been  rounded  off  in  unbroken  equanimity. 

However  reprehensible,  and  indeed  contemptible,  terres- 
trial reptiles  may  be,  the  only  question  which  appears  to  me 


Y8  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

to  be  relevant  to  my  argument  is  whether  these  creatures  are 
or  are  not  comprised  under  the  denomination  of  "  everything 
that  creepeth  upon  the  ground." 

Mr.  Gladstone  speaks  of  the  author  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  as  "  the  Mosaic  writer  "  ;  I  suppose,  therefore,  that  he 
will  admit  that  it  is  equally  proper  to  speak  of  the  author  of 
Leviticus  as  the  "  Mosaic  writer."  Whether  such  a  phrase 
would  he  used  by  any  one  who  had  an  adequate  conception  of 
the  assured  results  of  modern  biblical  criticism  is  another 
matter  ;  but,  at  any  rate,  it  can  not  be  denied  that  Leviticus 
has  as  much  claim  to  Mosaic  authorship  as  Genesis.  There- 
fore, if  one  wants  to  know  the  sense  of  a  phrase  used  in  Gen- 
esis, it  will  be  well  to  see  what  Leviticus  has  to  say  on  the 
matter.  Hence,  I  commend  the  following  extract  from  the 
eleventh  chapter  of  Leviticus  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  serious 
attention : — 

And  these  are  they  which  are  unclean  unto  you  among  the 
creeping  things  that  creep  upon  the  earth  :  the  weasel,  and  the 
mouse,  and  the  great  lizard  after  its  kind,  and  the  gecko,  and 
the  land-crocodile,  and  the  sand-lizard,  and  the  chameleon. 
These  are  they  which  are  unclean  to  you  among  all  that  creep 
(v.  29-31). 

The  merest  Sunday-school  exegesis  therefore  suffices  to 
prove  that  when  the  "  Mosaic  writer  "  in  Genesis  i.  24  speaks 
of  "  creeping  things,"  he  means  to  include  lizards  among 
them. 

This  being  so,  it  is  agreed,  on  all  hands,  that  terrestrial 
lizards,  and  other  reptiles  allied  to  lizards,  occur  in  the  Per- 
mian strata.  It  is  further  agreed  that  the  Triassic  strata 
were  deposited  after  these.  Moreover,  it  is  well  known  that, 
even  if  certain  footprints  are  to  be  taken  as  unquestionable 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  birds,  they  are  not  known  to 
occur  in  rocks  earlier  than  the  Trias,  while  indubitable  re- 
mains of  birds  are  to  be  met  with  only  much  later.  Hence  it 
follows  that  natural  science  does  not  "  affirm  "  the  statement 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  79 

that  birds  were  made  on  the  fifth  day,  and  "  everything  that 
creepeth  on  the  ground  "  on  the  sixth,  on  which  Mr.  Glad- 
stone rests  his  order ;  for,  as  is  shown  by  Leviticus,  the 
"  Mosaic  writer  "  includes  lizards  among  his  "  creeping 
things." 

Perhaps  I  have  given  myself  superfluous  trouble  in  the 
preceding  argument,  for  I  find  that  Mr.  Gladstone  is  willing 
to  assume  (he  does  not  say  to  admit)  that  the  statement  in 
the  text  of  Genesis  as  to  reptiles  can  not  "  in  all  points  be 
sustained "  (p.  16).  But  my  position  is  that  it  can  not  be 
sustained  in  any  point,  so  that,  after  all,  it  has  perhaps  been 
as  well  to  go  over  the  evidence  again.  And  then  Mr.  Glad- 
stone proceeds  as  if  nothing  had  happened  to  tell  us  that — 

There  remain  great  unshaken  facts  to  be  weighed.  First,  the 
fact  that  such  a  record  should  have  been  made  at  all. 

As  most  peoples  have  their  cosmogonies,  this  "  fact "  does 
not  strike  me  as  having  much  value. 

Secondly,  the  fact  that,  instead  of  dwelling  in  generalities, 
it  has  placed  itself  under  the  severe  conditions  of  a  chronologi- 
cal order  reaching  from  the  first  nisus  of  chaotic  matter  to  the 
consummated  production  of  a  fair  and  goodly,  a  f  urnished  and 
a  peopled  world. 

This  "  fact "  can  be  regarded  as  of  value  only  by  ignoring 
the  fact  demonstrated  in  my  previous  paper,  that  natural 
science  does  not  confirm  the  order  asserted  so  far  as  liv- 
ing things  are  concerned;  and  by  upsetting  a  fact  to  be 
brought  to  light  presently,  to  wit,  that,  in  regard  to  the 
rest  of  the  pentateuchal  cosmogony,  prudent  science  has  very 
little  to  say  one  way  or  the  other. 

Thirdly,  the  fact  that  its  cosmogony  seems,  in  the  light  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  to  draw  more  and  more  of  countenance 
from  the  best  natural  philosophy. 

I  have  already  questioned  the  accuracy  of  this  statement, 
and  I  do  not  observe  that  mere  repetition  adds  to  its  value. 


80  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

And,  fourthly,  that  it  has  described  the  successive  origins  of 
the  five  great  categories  of  present  life  with  which  human  ex- 
perience was  and  is  conversant,  in  that  order  which  geological 
authority  confirms. 

By  comparison  with  a  sentence  on  page  14,  in  which  a 
fivefold  order  is  substituted  for  the  "  fourfold  order,"  on 
which  the  "  plea  for  revelation  "  was  originally  founded,  it 
appears  that  these  five  categories  are  "  plants,  fishes,  birds, 
mammals,  and  man,"  which,  Mr.  Gladstone  affirms,  "are 
given  to  us  in  Genesis  in  the  order  of  succession  in  which 
they  are  also  given  by  the  latest  geological  authorities." 

I  must  venture  to  demur  to  this  statement.  I  showed 
in  my  previous  paper,  that  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
the  term  "  great  sea  monster  "  (used  in  Gen.  i.  21)  includes 
the  most  conspicuous  of  great  sea  animals—namely,  whales, 
dolphins,  porpoises,  manatees,  and  dugongs ;  *  and,  as  these 
are  indubitable  mammals,  it  is  impossible  to  affirm  that  mam- 
mals come  after  birds,  which  are  said  to  have  been  created  on 
the  same  day.  Moreover,  I  pointed  out  that  as  these  Cetacea 
and  Sirenia  are  certainly  modified  land  animals,  their  exist- 
ence implies  the  antecedent  existence  of  land  mammals. 

Furthermore,  I  have  to  remark  that  the  term  "  fishes  "  as 
used,  technically,  in  zoology,  by  no  means  covers  all  the  mov- 
ing creatures  that  have  life,  which  are  bidden  to  "  fill  the 
waters  in  the  seas  "  (Gen.  i.  20-22).  Marine  mollusks  and 
Crustacea,  echinoderms,  corals,  and  f oraminif era  are  not  tech- 
nically fishes.  But  they  are  abundant  in  the  palaeozoic  rocks, 
ages  upon  ages  older  than  those  in  which  the  first  evidences 
of  true  fishes  appear.  And  if,  in  a  geological  book,  Mr. 
Gladstone  finds  the  quite  true  statement  that  plants  appeared 
before  fishes,  it  is  only  by  a  complete  misunderstanding  that 
he  can  be  led  to  imagine  it  serves  his  purpose.     As  a  matter 

*  Both  dolphins  and  dugongs  occur  in  the  Red  Sea,  porpoises  and 
dolphins  in  the  Mediterranean ;  so  that  the  "  Mosaic  writer  "  may  well 
have  been  acquainted  with  them. 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  81 

of  fact,  at  the  present  moment,  it  is  a  question  whether,  on 
the  bare  evidence  afforded  by  fossils,  the  marine  creeping 
thing  or  the  marine  plant  has  the  seniority.  No  cautious 
palaeontologist  would  express  a  decided  opinion  on  the  mat- 
ter. But,  if  we  are  to  read  the  pentateuchal  statement  as  a 
scientific  document  (and,  in  spite  of  all  protests  to  the  con- 
trary, those  who  bring  it  into  comparison  with  science  do 
seek  to  make  a  scientific  document  of  it),  then,  as  it  is  quite 
clear  that  only  terrestrial  plants  of  high  organization  are 
spoken  of  in  verses  11  and  12,  no  palaeontologist  would  hesi- 
tate to  say  that,  at  present,  the  records  of  sea  animal  life  are 
vastly  older  than  those  of  any  land  plant  describable  as 
"  grass,  herb  yielding  seed,  or  fruit-tree." 

Thus,  although,  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  "  Defense,"  the  "  old 
order  passeth  into  new,"  his  case  is  not  improved.  The 
fivefold  order  is  no  more  "  affirmed  in  our  time  by  natural 
science  "  to  be  "  a  demonstrated  conclusion  and  established 
fact "  than  the  fourfold  order  was.  Natural  science  appears 
to  me  to  decline  to  have  anything  to  do  with  either ;  they 
are  as  wrong  in  detail  as  they  are  mistaken  in  principle. 

There  is  another  change  of  position,  the  value  of  which 
is  not  so  apparent  to  me,  as  it  may  well  seem  to  be  to  those 
who  are  unfamiliar  with  the  subject  under  discussion.  Mr. 
Gladstone  discards  his  three  groups  of  "water-population," 
"  air-population,"  and  "  land-population,"  and  substitutes  for 
them  (1)  fishes,  (2)  birds,  (3)  mammals,  (4)  man.  Moreover, 
it  is  assumed,  in  a  note,  that  "  the  higher  or  ordinary  mam- 
mals "  alone  were  known  to  the  "  Mosaic  writer  "  (p.  6).  No 
doubt  it  looks,  at  first,  as  if  something  were  gained  by  this 
alteration ;  for,  as  I  have  just  pointed  out,  the  word  "  fishes  " 
can  be  used  in  two  senses,  one  of  which  has  a  deceptive  ap- 
pearance of  adjustability  to  the  "  Mosaic  "  account.  Then 
the  inconvenient  reptiles  are  banished  out  of  sight;  and, 
finally,  the  question  of  the  exact  meaning  of  "  higher  "  and 
"  ordinary  "  in  the  case  of  mammals  opens  up  the  prospect 
of  a  hopeful  logomachy.     But  what  is  the  good  of  it  all  in 


82  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  face  of  Leviticus  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  palaeontology 
on  the  other  ? 

As,  in  my  apprehension,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  justifi- 
cation for  the  suggestion  that  when  the  pentateuchal 
writer  says  "  fowl  "  he  excludes  bats  (which  as  we  shall  see 
directly,  are  expressly  included  under  "  fowl "  in  Leviticus), 
and  as  I  have  already  shown  that  he  demonstrably  includes 
reptiles,  as  well  as  mammals,  among  the  creeping  things  of 
the  land,  I  may  be  permitted  to  spare  my  readers  further  dis- 
cussion of  the  "  fivefold  order."  On  the  whole,  it  is  seen 
to  be  rather  more  inconsistent  with  Genesis  than  its  fourfold 
predecessor. 

But  I  have  yet  a  fresh  order  to  face.  Mr.  Gladstone  (p. 
11)  understands  w  the  main  statements  of  Genesis  in  success- 
ive order  of  time,  but  without  any  measurement  of  it  divis- 
ions, to  be  as  follows  : — 

1.  A  period  of  land,  anterior  to  all  life  (v.  9, 10). 

2.  A  period  of  vegetable  life,  anterior  to  animal  life  (v.  11, 
12). 

3.  A  period  of  animal  life,  in  the  order  of  fishes  (v.  20). 

4.  Another  stage  of  animal  life,  in  the  order  of  birds. 

5.  Another,  in  the  order  of  beasts  (v.  24,  25). 

6.  Last  of  all,  man  (v.  2G,  27)." 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  tries  to  find  the  proof  of  the  occur- 
rence of  a  similar  succession  in  sundry  excellent  works  on 
geology. 

I  am  really  grieved  to  be  obliged  to  say  that  this  third  (or 
is  it  fourth  ?)  modification  of  the  foundation  of  the  "  plea  for 
revelation  "  originally  set  forth,  satisfies  me  as  little  as  any  of 
its  predecessors. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  I  can  not  accept  the  assertion  that 
this  order  is  to  be  found  in  Genesis.  With  respect  to  No.  5, 
for  example,  I  hold,  as  I  have  already  said,  that  "  great  sea 
monsters"  includes  the  Cetacea,  in  which  case  mammals 
(which  is  what,  I  suppose,  Mr.  Gladstone  means  by  "  beasts  ") 


MR.   GLADSTONE  AND   GENESIS.  83 

come  in  under  head  No.  3,  and  not  under  No.  5.  Again, 
"  fowl "  are  said  in  Genesis  to  be  created  on  the  same  day  as 
fishes  ;  therefore  I  can  not  accept  an  order  which  makes 
birds  succeed  fishes.  Once  more,  as  it  is  quite  certain  that 
the  term  "  fowl  "  includes  the  bats — for  in  Leviticus  xi.  13- 
19  we  read,  "  And  these  shall  ye  have  in  abomination  among 
the  fowls  .  .  .  the  heron  after  its  kind,  and  the  hoopoe,  and 
the  bat " — it  is  obvious  that  bats  are  also  said  to  have  been 
created  at  stage  No.  3.  And  as  bats  are  mammals,  and  their 
existence  obviously  presupposes  that  of  terrestrial  "beasts," 
it  is  quite  clear  that  the  latter  could  not  have  first  appeared 
as  No.  5.  I  need  not  repeat  my  reasons  for  doubting  whether 
man  came  "last  of  all." 

As  the  latter  half  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  sixfold  order  thus 
shows  itself  to  be  wholly  unauthorized  by,  and  inconsistent 
with,  the  plain  language  of  the  Pentateuch,  I  might  decline 
to  discuss  the  admissibility  of  its  former  half. 

But  I  will  add  one  or  two  remarks  on  this  point  also. 
Does  Mr.  Gladstone  mean  to  say  that  in  any  of  the  works  he 
has  cited,  or  indeed  anywhere  else,  he  can  find  scientific  war- 
ranty for  the  assertion  that  there  was  a  period  of  land — by 
which  I  suppose  he  means  dry  land  (for  submerged  land 
must  needs  be  as  old  as  the  separate  existence  of  the  sea — 
"  anterior  to  all  life  "  ? 

It  may  be  so,  or  it  may  not  be  so ;  but  where  is  the  evi- 
dence which  would  justify  any  one  in  making  a  positive  asser- 
tion on  the  subject?  What  competent  palaeontologist  will 
affirm,  at  this  present  moment,  that  he  knows  anything  about 
the  period  at  which  life  originated,  or  will  assert  more  than 
the  extreme  probability  that  such  origin  was  a  long  way  an- 
tecedent to  any  traces  of  life  at  present  known  ?  What  physi- 
cal geologist  will  affirm  that  he  knows  when  dry  land  began 
to  exist,  or  will  say  more  than  that  it  was  probably  very  much 
earlier  than  any  extant  direct  evidence  of  terrestrial  condi- 
tions indicates  ? 

I   think  I   know  pretty  well    the  answers  which   the 


84  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

authorities  quoted  by  Mr.  Gladstone  would  give  to  these 
questions ;  but  I  leave  it  to  them  to  give  them  if  they  think 
fit. 

If  I  ventured  to  speculate  on  the  matter  at  all,  I  should 
say  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  sea  is  older  than  dry  land, 
inasmuch  as  a  solid  terrestrial  surface  may  very  well  have  ex- 
isted before  the  earth  was  cool  enough  to  allow  of  the  exist- 
ence of  fluid  water.  And,  in  this  case,  dry  land  may  have 
existed  before  the  sea.  As  to  the  first  appearance  of  life,  the 
whole  argument  of  analogy,  whatever  it  may  be  worth  in 
such  a  case,  is  in  favor  of  the  absence  of  living  beings  until 
long  after  the  hot  water  seas  had  constituted  themselves; 
and  of  the  subsequent  appearance  of  aquatic  before  terrestrial 
forms  of  life.  But  whether  these  "  protoplasts  "  would,  if  we 
could  examine  them,  be  reckoned  among  the  lowest  micro- 
scopic algas,  or  fungi ;  or  among  those  doubtful  organisms 
which  lie  in  the  debatable  land  between  animals  and  plants, 
is,  in  my  judgment,  a  question  on  which  a  prudent  biologist 
will  reserve  his  opinion. 

I  think  that  I  have  now  disposed  of  those  parts  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  defense  in  which  I  seem  to  discover  a  design  to 
rescue  his  solemn  "  plea  for  revelation."  But  a  great  deal 
of  the  "  Proem  to  Genesis  "  remains  which  I  would  gladly 
pass  over  in  silence,  were  such  a  course  consistent  with  the 
respect  due  to  so  distinguished  a  champion  of  the  "  recon- 
cilers." 

I  hope  that  my  clients — the  people  of  average  opinions — 
have  by  this  time  some  confidence  in  me ;  for  when  I  tell 
them  that,  after  all,  Mr.  Gladstone  is  of  opinion  that  the 
"  Mosaic  record  "  was  meant  to  give  moral,  and  not  scientific, 
instruction  to  those  for»  whom  it  was  written,  they  may  be 
disposed  to  think  that  I  must  be  misleading  them.  But  let 
them  listen  further  to  what  Mr.  Gladstone  says  in  a  com- 
pendious but  not  exactly  correct  statement  respecting  my 
opinions : — 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  85 

He  holds  the  writer  responsible  for  scientific  precision:  I 
look  for  nothing  of  the  kind,  but  assign  to  him  a  statement  gen- 
eral, which  admits  exceptions ;  popular,  which  aims  mainly  at 
producing  moral  impression ;  summary,  which  can  not  but  be 
open  to  more  or  less  of  criticism  of  detail.  He  thinks  it  is  a  lect- 
ure.    I  think  it  is  a  sermon  (p.  5;. 

I  note,  incidentally,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  appears  to  con- 
sider that  the  differentia  between  a  lecture  and  a  sermon  is, 
that  the  former,  so  far  as  it  deals  with  matters  of  fact,  may 
be  taken  seriously,  as  meaning  exactly  what  it  says,  while  a 
sermon  may  not.  I  have  quite  enough  on  my  hands  without 
taking  up  the  cudgels  for  the  clergy,  who  will  probably  find 
Mr.  Gladstone's  definition  unflattering. 

But  I  am  diverging  from  my  proper  business,  which  is  to 
say  that  I  have  given  no  ground  for  the  ascription  of  these 
opinions ;  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  do  not  hold  them 
and  never  have  held  them.  It  is  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  not  I, 
who  will  have  it  that  the  pentateuchal  cosmogony  is  to  be 
taken  as  science. 

My  belief,  on  the  contrary,  is,  and  long  has  been,  that  the 
pentateuchal  story  of  the  creation  is  simply  a  myth.  I  sup- 
pose it  to  be  an  hypothesis  respecting  the  origin  of  the  uni- 
verse which  some  ancient  thinker  found  himself  able  to  recon- 
cile with  his  knowledge,  or  what  he  thought  was  knowledge, 
of  the  nature  of  things,  and  therefore  assumed  to  be  true. 
As  such,  I  hold  it  to  be  not  merely  an  interesting,  but  a  ven- 
erable, monument  of  a  stage  in  the  mental  progress  of  man- 
kind ;  and  I  find  it  difficult  to  suppose  that  any  one  who 
is  acquainted  with  the  cosmogonies  of  other  nations — and 
especially  with  those  of  the  Egyptians  and  the  Babylonians, 
with  whom  the  Israelites  were  in  such  frequent  and  inti- 
mate communication — should  consider  it  to  possess  either 
more,  or  less,  scientific  importance  than  may  be  allotted  to 
these. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  definition  of  a  sermon  permits  me  to  sus- 
pect that  he  may  not  see  much  difference  between  that  form 


86  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  discourse  and  what  I  call  a  myth ;  and  I  hope  it  may  he 
something  more  than  the  slowness  of  apprehension,  to  which 
I  have  confessed,  which  leads  me  to  imagine  that  a  statement 
which  is  "  general "  but  "  admits  exceptions,"  which  is  "  popu- 
lar "  and  "  aims  mainly  at  producing  moral  impression," 
u  summary "  and  therefore  open  to  "  criticism  of  detail," 
amounts  to  a  myth,  or  perhaps  less  than  a  myth.  Put  alge- 
braically, it  comes  to  this,  x  =  a  -f-  #  +  c ;  always  remember- 
ing that  there  is  nothing  to  show  the  exact  value  of  either  a, 
or  #,  or  c.  It  is  true  that  a  is  commonly  supposed  to  equal 
10,  but  there  are  exceptions,  and  these  may  reduce  it  to 
8,  or  3,  or  0 ;  b  also  popularly  means  10,  but  being  chiefly 
used  by  the  algebraist  as  a  "  moral "  value,  you  can  not  do 
much  with  it  in  the  addition  or  subtraction  of  mathemati- 
cal values ;  c  also  is  quite  "  summary,"  and  if  you  go  into 
the  details  of  which  it  is  made  up,  many  of  them  may  be 
wrong,  and  their  sum  total  equal  to  0,  or  even  to  a  minus 
quantity. 

Mr.  Gladstone  appears  to  wish  that  I  should  (1)  enter 
upon  a  sort  of  essay  competition  with  the  author  of  the  pen- 
tateuchal  cosmogony ;  (2)  that  I  should  make  a  further  state- 
ment about  some  elementary  facts  in  the  history  of  Indian 
and  Greek  philosophy ;  and  (3)  that  I  should  show  cause  for 
my  hesitation  in  accepting  the  assertion  that  Genesis  is  sup- 
ported, at  any  rate  to  the  extent  of  the  first  two  verses,  by 
the  nebular  hypothesis. 

A  certain  sense  of  humor  prevents  me  from  accepting  the 
first  invitation.  I  would  as  soon  attempt  to  put  Hamlet's 
soliloquy  into  a  more  scientific  shape.  But  if  I  supposed  the 
"Mosaic  writer"  to  be  inspired,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  does,  it 
would  not  be  consistent  with  my  notions  of  respect  for  the 
Supreme  Being  to  imagine  Him  unable  to  frame  a  form  of 
words  which  should  accurately,  or,  at  least,  not  inaccurately, 
express  His  own  meaning.  It  is  sometimes  said  that,  had 
the  statements  contained  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  been 
scientifically  true,  they  would  have  been  unintelligible  to 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  87 

ignorant  people;  but  how  is  the  matter  mended  if,  being 
scientifically  untrue,  they  must  needs  be  rejected  by  in- 
structed people  ? 

With  respect  to  the  second  suggestion,  it  would  be  pre- 
sumptuous in  me  to  pretend  to  instruct  Mr.  Gladstone  in 
matters  which  lie  as  much  within  the  province  of  Literature 
and  History  as  in  that  of  Science ;  but  if  any  one  desirous  of 
further  knowledge  will  be  so  good  as  to  turn  to  that  most 
excellent  and  by  no  means  recondite  source  of  information, 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  he  will  find,  under  the  letter 
E,  the  word  "  Evolution,"  and  a  long  article  on  that  subject. 
Now,  I  do  not  recommend  him  to  read  the  first  half  of  the 
article ;  but  the  second  half,  by  my  friend  Mr.  Sully,  is  really 
very  good.  He  will  there  find  it  said  that  in  some  of  the 
philosoj)hies  of  ancient  India,  the  idea  of  evolution  is  clearly 
expressed  :  "  Brahma  is  conceived  as  the  eternal  self -existent 
being,  which,  on  its  material  side,  unfolds  itself  to  the  world 
by  gradually  condensing  itself  to  material  objects  through 
the  gradations  of  ether,  fire,  water,  earth,  and  other  ele- 
ments." And  again :  "  In  the  later  system  of  emanation  of 
Sankhya  there  is  a  more  marked  approach  to  a  materialistic 
doctrine  of  evolution."  What  little  knowledge  I  have  of  the 
matter — chiefly  derived  from  that  very  instructive  book,  Die 
Religion  des  Buddha,  by  C.  F.  Koeppen,  supplemented  by 
Hardy's  interesting  works — leads  me  to  think  that  Mr.  Sully 
might  have  spoken  much  more  strongly  as  to  the  evolution- 
ary character  of  Indian  philosophy,  and  especially  of  that  of 
the  Buddhists.  But  the  question  is  too  large  to  be  dealt  with 
incidentally. 

And,  with  respect  to  early  Greek  philosophy,*  the  seeker 
after  additional  enlightenment  need  go  no  further  than  the 
same  excellent  storehouse  of  information  : — 

*I  said  nothing  about  "the  greater  number  of  schools  of  Greek 
philosophy,"  as  Mr.  Gladstone  implies  that  I  did,  but  expressly  spoke 
of  the  "  founders  of  Greek  philosophy." 


88  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

The  early  Ionian  physicists,  including  Thales,  Anaximander, 
and  Anaximenes,  seek  to  explain  the  world  as  generated  out  of 
a  primordial  matter  which  is  at  the  same  time  the  universal 
support  of  things.  This  substance  is  endowed  with  a  genera- 
tive or  transmutative  force  by  virtue  of  which  it  passes  into  a 
succession  of  forms.  They  thus  resemble  modern  evolutionists, 
since  they  regard  the  world,  with  its  infinite  variety  of  forms, 
as  issuing  from  a  simple  mode  of  matter. 

Further  on,  Mr.  Sully  remarks  that  "  Heraclitus  deserves 
a  prominent  place  in  the  history  of  the  idea  of  evolution," 
and  he  states,  with  perfect  justice,  that  Heraclitus  has  fore- 
shadowed some  of  the  special  peculiarities  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
views.  It  is  indeed  a  very  strange  circumstance  that  the 
philosophy  of  the  great  Ephesian  more  than  adumbrates  the 
two  doctrines  which  have  played  leading  parts,  the  one  in 
the  development  of  Christian  dogma,  the  other  in  that  of 
natural  science.  The  former  is  the  conception  of  the  Word 
(Xoyo?)  which  took  its  Jewish  shape  in  Alexandria,  and  its 
Christian  form  *  in  that  Gospel  which  is  usually  referred  to 
an  Ephesian  source  of  some  five  centuries  later  date ;  and 
the  latter  is  that  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  The  saying 
that  "  strife  is  father  and  king  of  all "  (77-oA.e/xos  irdvrwv  fxlv 
irarrip  io-Tt,  TravTOiv  SI  /SacnAeus),  ascribed  to  Heraclitus,  would 
be  a  not  inappropriate  motto  for  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 

I  have  referred  only  to  Mr.  Sully's  article,  because  his 
authority  is  quite  sufficient  for  my  purpose.  But  the  con- 
sultation of  any  of  the  more  elaborate  histories  of  Greek 
philosophy,  such  as  the  great  work  of  Zeller,  for  example, 
will  only  bring  out  the  same  fact  into  still  more  striking 
prominence.  I  have  professed  no  "  minute  acquaintance  " 
with  either  Indian  or  Greek  philosophy,  but  I  have  taken  a 
great  deal  of  pains  to  secure  that  such  knowledge  as  I  do 
possess  shall  be  accurate  and  trustworthy. 

In  the  third  place,  Mr.  Gladstone  appears  to  wish  that  I 

*  See  Heinze,  Die  Lehre  vom  Logos,  p.  9  et  seq. 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  89 

should  discuss  with  him  the  question  whether  the  nebular 
hypothesis  is,  or  is  not,  confirmatory  of  the  pentateuchal  ac- 
count of  the  origin  of  things.  Mr.  Gladstone  appears  to  be 
prepared  to  enter  upon  this  campaign  with  a  light  heart.  I 
confess  I  am  not,  and  my  reason  for  this  backwardness  will 
doubtless  surprise  Mr.  Gladstone.  It  is  that,  rather  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  (namely,  in  February,  1859) 
when  it  was  my  duty,  as  President  of  the  Geological  Society, 
to  deliver  the  Anniversary  Address,*  I  chose  a  topic  which 
involved  a  very  careful  study  of  the  remarkable  cosmogonical 
speculation,  originally  promulgated  by  Immanuel  Kant  and, 
subsequently,  by  Laplace,  which  is  now  known  as  the  nebu- 
lar hypothesis.  With  the  help  of  such  little  acquaintance 
with  the  principles  of  physics  and  astronomy  as  I  had  gained, 
I  endeavored  to  obtain  a  clear  understanding  of  this  specula- 
tion in  all  its  bearings.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  succeeded ;  but 
of  this  I  am  certain,  that  the  problems  involved  are  very  dif- 
ficult, even  for  those  who  possess  the  intellectual  discipline 
requisite  for  dealing  with  them.  And  it  was  this  conviction 
that  led  me  to  express  my  desire  to  leave  the  discussion  of 
the  question  of  the  asserted  harmony  between  Genesis  and 
the  nebular  hypothesis  to  experts  in  the  appropriate  branches 
of  knowledge.  And  I  think  my  course  was  a  wise  one ;  but 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  evidently  does  not  understand  how  there 
can  be  any  hesitation  on  my  part,  unless  it  arises  from  a  con- 
viction that  he  is  in  the  right,  I  may  go  so  far  as  to  set  out 
my  difficulties. 

They  are  of  two  kinds — exegetical  and  scientific.  It  ap- 
pears to  me  that  it  is  vain  to  discuss  a  supposed  coinci- 
dence between  Genesis  and  science  unless  we  have  first  set- 
tled, on  the  one  hand,  what  Genesis  says,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  what  science  says. 

In  the  first  place,  I  can  not  find  any  consensus  among 
biblical  scholars  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  words,  "  In  the  be- 

*  Reprinted  in  Lay  Sermons,  Addresses,  and  Reviews,  1870. 
5 


90  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth."  Some  say 
that  the  Hebrew  word  bara,  which  is  translated  "  create," 
means  "  made  out  of  nothing."  I  venture  to  object  to  that 
rendering,  not  on  the  ground  of  scholarship,  but  of  common 
sense.  Omnipotence  itself  can  surely  no  more  make  some- 
thing "  out  of  "  nothing  than  it  can  make  a  triangular  circle. 
What  is  intended  by  "  made  out  of  nothing  "  appears  to  be 
"  caused  to  come  into  existence,"  with  'the  implication  that 
nothing  of  the  same  kind  previously  existed.  It  is  further 
usually  assumed  that  "  the  heaven  and  the  earth  "  means  the 
material  substance  of  the  universe.  Hence  the  "Mosaic 
writer  "  is  taken  to  imply  that  where  nothing  of  a  material 
nature  previously  existed,  this  substance  appeared.  That  is 
perfectly  conceivable,  and  therefore  no  one  can  deny  that  it 
may  have  happened.  But  there  are  other  very  authoritative 
critics  who  say  that  the  ancient  Israelite  *  who  wrote  the 
passage  was  not  likely  to  have  been  capable  of  such  abstract 
thinking;  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  philology,  bara  is  com- 
monly used  to  signify  the  "  fashioning,"  or  "  forming,"  of 
that  which  already  exists.  Now  it  appears  to  me  that  the 
scientific  investigator  is  wholly  incompetent  to  say  anything 
at  all  about  the  first  origin  of  the  material  universe.  The 
whole  power  of  his  organon  vanishes  when  he  has  to  step  be- 
yond the  chain  of  natural  causes  and  effects.  "No  form  of 
the  nebular  hypothesis,  that  I  know  of,  is  necessarily  con- 
nected with  any  view  of  the  origination  of  the  nebular  sub- 
stance. Kant's  form  of  it  expressly  supposes  that  the  nebu- 
lar material  from  which  one  stellar  system  starts  may  be 
nothing  but  the  disintegrated  substance  of  a  stellar  and  plan- 
etary system  which  has  just  come  to  an  end.  Therefore,  so 
far  as  I  can  see,  one  who  believes  that  matter  has  existed 
from  all  eternity  has  just  as  much  right  to  hold  the  nebular 

*  "  Ancient,"  doubtless,  but  his  antiquity  must  not  be  exaggerated. 
For  example,  there  is  no  proof  that  the  "Mosaic"  cosmogony  was 
known  to  the  Israelites  of  Solomon's  time. 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND   GENESIS.  91 

hypothesis  as  one  who  believes  that  matter  came  into  exist- 
ence at  a  specified  epoch.  In  other  words,  the  nebular  hy- 
pothesis and  the  creation  hypothesis,  up  to  this  point,  neither 
confirm  nor  oppose  one  another. 

Next,  we  read  in  the  revisers'  version,  in  which  I  suppose 
the  ultimate  results  of  critical  scholarship  to  be  embodied : 
"  And  the  earth  was  waste  ['  without  form,'  in  the  Author- 
ized Version]  and  void."  Most  people  seem  to  think  that 
this  phraseology  intends  to  imply  that  the  matter  out  of 
which  the  world  was  to  be  formed  was  a  veritable  "  chaos," 
devoid  of  law  and  order.  If  this  interpretation  is  correct, 
the  nebular  hypothesis  can  have  nothing  to  say  to  it.  The 
scientific  thinker  can  not  admit  the  absence  of  law  and  order, 
anywhere  or  anywhen,  in  nature.  Sometimes  law  and  order 
are  patent  and  visible  to  our  limited  vision  ;  sometimes  they 
are  hidden.  But  every  particle  of  the  matter  of  the  most 
fantastic-looking  nebula  in  the  heavens  is  a  realm  of  law  and 
order  in  itself ;  and,  that  it  is  so,  is  the  essential  condition  of 
the  possibility  of  solar  and  planetary  evolution  from  the  ap- 
parent chaos.* 

"  Waste  "  is  too  vague  a  term  to  be  worth  consideration. 
"  Without  form,"  intelligible  enough  as  a  metaphor,  if  taken 
literally,  is  absurd;  for  a  material  thing  existing  in  space 
must  have  a  superficies,  and  if  it  has  a  superficies  it  has  a 
form.  The  wildest  streaks  of  marestail  clouds  in  the  sky,  or 
the  most  irregular  heavenly  nebulae,  have  surely  just  as  much 
form  as  a  geometrical  tetrahedron ;  and  as  for  "  void,"  how 
can  that  be  void  which  is  full  of  matter  ?  As  poetry,  these 
lines  are  vivid  and  admirable ;  as  a  scientific  statement,  which 
they  must  be  taken  to  be  if  any  one  is  justified  in  comparing 
them  with  another  scientific  statement,  they  fail  to  convey 
any  intelligible  conception  to  my  mind. 

*  When  Jeremiah  (iv.  23)  says,  "  I  beheld  the  earth,  and,  lo,  it  was 
waste  and  void,"  he  certainly  does  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  form  of 
the  earth  was  less  definite,  or  its  substance  less  solid,  than  before. 


92  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

The  account  proceeds:  "And  darkness  was  upon  the 
face  of  the  deep."  So  be  it ;  but  where,  then,  is  the  likeness 
to  the  celestial  nebulas,  of  the  existence  of  which  we  should 
know  nothing  unless  they  shone  with  a  light  of  their  own  ? 
"  And  the  spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters." 
I  have  met  with  no  form  of  the  nebular  hypothesis  which  in- 
volves anything  analogous  to  this  process. 

I  have  said  enough  to  explain  some  of  the  difficulties 
which  arise  in  my  mind,  when  I  try  to  ascertain  whether 
there  is  any  foundation  for  the  contention  that  the  state- 
ments contained  in  the  first  two  verses  of  Genesis  are  sup- 
ported by  the  nebular  hypothesis.  The  result  does  not 
appear  to  me  to  be  exactly  favorable  to  that  contention. 
The  nebular  hypothesis  assumes  the  existence  of  matter, 
having  definite  properties,  as  its  foundation.  Whether  such 
matter  was  created  a  few  thousand  years  ago,  or  whether  it 
has  existed  through  an  eternal  series  of  metamorphoses  of 
which  our  present  universe  is  only  the  last  stage,  are  alter- 
natives, neither  of  which  is  scientifically  untenable,  and 
neither  scientifically  demonstrable.  But  science  knows 
nothing  of  any  stage  in  which  the  universe  could  be  said,  in 
other  than  a  metaphorical  and  popular  sense,  to  be  formless 
or  empty ;  or  in  any  respect  less  the  seat  of  law  and  order 
than  it  is  now.  One  might  as  well  talk  of  a  fresh-laid  hen's 
egg  being  "  without  form  and  void,"  because  the  chick 
therein  is  potential  and  not  actual,  as  apply  such  terms  to 
the  nebulous  mass  which  contains  a  potential  solar  system. 

Until  some  further  enlightenment  comes  to  me,  then,  I 
confess  myself  wholly  unable  to  understand  the  way  in 
which  the  nebular  hypothesis  is  to  be  converted  into  an  ally 
of  the  Mosaic  writer."  * 


*  In  looking  through  the  delightful  volume  recently  published  by 
the  Astronomer  Royal  for  Ireland,  a  day  or  two  ago,  I  find  the  follow- 
ing remarks  on  the  nebular  hypothesis,  which  I  should  have  been  glad 
to  quote  in  my  text  if  I  had  known  them  sooner  : — 

"  Nor  can  it  be  ever  more  than  a  speculation  •  it  can  not  be  estab- 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  93 

But  Mr.  Gladstone  informs  us  that  Professor  Dana  and 
Professor  Guyot  are  prepared  to  prove  that  the  "  first  or 
cosmogonical  portion  of  the  Proem  not  only  accords  with, 
but  teaches,  the  nebular  hypothesis."  There  is  no  one  to 
whose  authority  on  geological  questions  I  am  more  readily 
disposed  to  bow  than  that  of  my  eminent  friend  Professor 
Dana.  But  I  am  familiar  with  what  he  has  previously 
said  on  this  topic  in  his  well-known  and  standard  work,  into 
which,  strangely  enough,  it  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred 
to  Mr.  Gladstone  to  look  before  he  set  out  upon  his  present 
undertaking ;  and  unless  Professor  Dana's  latest  contribution 
(which  I  have  not  yet  met  with)  takes  up  altogether  new 
ground,  I  am  afraid  I  shall  not  be  able  to  extricate  myself,  by 
its  help,  from  my  present  difficulties. 

It  is  a  very  long  time  since  I  began  to  think  about  the 
relations  between  modern  scientifically  ascertained  truths 
and  the  cosmogonical  speculations  of  the  writer  of  Genesis  ; 
and,  as  I  think  that  Mr.  Gladstone  might  have  been  able  to 
put  his  case  with  a  good  deal  more  force  if  he  had  thought  it 
worth  while  to  consult  the  last  chapter  of  Professor  Dana's 
admirable  Manual  of  Geology,  so  I  think  he  might  have 
been  made  aware  that  he  was  undertaking  an  enterprise  of 
which  he  had  not  counted  the  cost,  if  he  had  chanced  upon  a 
discussion  of  the  subject  which  I  published  in  1877.* 

lished  by  observation,  nor  can  it  be  proved  by  calculation.  It  is 
merely  a  conjecture,  more  or  less  plausible,  but  perhaps,  in  some 
degree,  necessarily  true,  if  our  present  laws  of  heat,  as  we  understand 
them,  admit  of  the  extreme  application  here  required,  and  if  the 
present  order  of  things  has  reigned  for  sufficient  time  without  the 
intervention  of  any  influence  at  present  known  to  us"  {The  Story  of 
the  Heavens,  p.  506). 

Would  any  prudent  advocate  base  a  plea,  either  for  or  against 
revelation,  upon  the  coincidence,  or  want  of  coincidence,  of  the  declara- 
tions of  the  latter  with  the  requirements  of  an  hypothesis  thus  guardedly 
dealt  with  by  an  astronomical  expert  I 

*  Lectures  on  Evolution  delivered  in  New  York  (American  Ad- 
dresses). 


94  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Finally,  I  should  like  to  draw  the  attention  of  those  who 
take  interest  in  these  topics  to  the  weighty  words  of  one  of 
the  most  learned  and  moderate  of  biblical  critics : — 

A  propos  de  cette  premiere  page  de  la  Bible,  on  a  coutume 
de  nos  jours  de  disserter,  a  perte  de  vue,  sur  l'accord  du  recit 
mosaique  avec  les  sciences  naturelles;  et  comme  celles-ci,  tout 
eloignees  qu'elles  sont  encore  de  la  perfection  absolue,  ont 
rendu  populaires  et  en  quelque  sorte  irrefragables  un  certain 
nombre  de  faits  generaux  ou  de  theses  fondamentales  de  la 
cosmologie  et  de  la  geologie,  c'est  le  texte  sacre  qu'on  s'evertue 
a  torturer  pour  le  faire  concorder  avec  ces  donnees.* 

In  my  paper  on  the  "  Interpreters  of  Nature  and  the 
Interpreters  of  Genesis,"  while  freely  availing  myself  of  the 
rights  of  a  scientific  critic,  I  endeavored  to  keep  the  ex- 
pression of  my  views  well  within  those  bounds  of  courtesy 
which  are  set  by  self-respect  and  consideration  for  others.  I 
am  therefore  glad  to  be  favored  with  Mr.  Gladstone's  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  success  of  my  efforts.  I  only  wish  that 
I  could  accept  all  the  products  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  gracious 
appreciation,  but  there  is  one  about  which,  as  a  matter  of 
honesty,  I  hesitate.  In  fact,  if  I  had  expressed  my  meaning 
better  than  I  seem  to  have  done,  I  doubt  if  this  particular 
proffer  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  thanks  would  have  been  made. 

To  my  mind,  whatever  doctrine  professes  to  be  the  result 
of  the  application  of  the  accepted  rules  of  inductive  and  de- 
ductive logic  to  its  subject-matter ;  and  accepts,  within  the 
limits  which  it  sets  to  itself,  the  supremacy  of  reason,  is 
Science.  Whether  the  subject-matter  consists  of  realities  or 
unrealities,  truths  or  falsehoods,  is  quite  another  question.  I 
conceive  that  ordinary  geometry  is  science,  by  reason  of  its 
method,  and  I  also  believe  that  its  axioms,  definitions,  and 
conclusions  are  all  true.  However,  there  is  a  geometry  of 
four  dimensions,  which  I  also  believe  to  be  science,  because 
its  method  professes  to  be  strictly  scientific.     It  is  true  that  I 

*  Reuss,  UHistoire  Sainte  et  la  Lot,  vol.  i.  p.  275. 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND   GENESIS.  95 

can  not  conceive  four  dimensions  in  space,  and  therefore,  for 
me,  the  whole  affair  is  unreal.  But  I  have  known  men  of 
great  intellectual  powers  who  seemed  to  have  no  difficulty 
either  in  conceiving  them,  or,  at  any  rate,  in  imagining  how 
they  could  conceive  them ;  and,  therefore,  four-dimensioned 
geometry  comes  under  my  notion  of  science.  So  I  think 
astrology  is  a  science,  in  so  far  as  it  professes  to  reason 
logically  from  principles  established  by  just  inductive 
methods.  To  prevent  misunderstanding,  perhaps  I  had 
better  add  that  I  do  not  believe  one  whit  in  astrology ;  but 
no  more  do  I  believe  in  Ptolemaic  astronomy,  or  in  the 
catastrophic  geology  of  my  youth,  although  these,  in  their 
day,  claimed — and,  to  my  mind,  rightly  claimed — the  name 
of  science.  If  nothing  is  to  be  called  science  but  that  which 
is  exactly  true  from  beginning  to  end,  I  am  afraid  there 
is  very  little  science  in  the  world  outside  mathematics. 
Among  the  physical  sciences,  I  do  not  know  that  any  could 
claim  more  than  that  it  is  true  within  certain  limits,  so 
narrow  that,  for  the  present  at  any  rate,  they  may  be 
neglected.  If  such  is  the  case,  I  do  not  see  where  the  line  is 
to  be  drawn  between  exactly  true,  partially  true,  and  mainly 
untrue  forms  of  science.  And  what  I  have  said  about  the 
current  theology  at  the  end  of  my  paper  [p.  72]  leaves,  I 
think,  no  doubt  as  to  the  category  in  which  I  rank  it.  For 
all  that,  I  think  it  would  be  not  only  unjust,  but  almost  im- 
pertinent, to  refuse  the  name  of  science  to  the  Summa  of  St. 
Thomas  or  to  the  Institutes  of  Calvin. 

In  conclusion,  I  confess  that  my  supposed  "un  jaded  ap- 
petite "  for  the  sort  of  controversy  in  which  it  needed  not 
Mr.  Gladstone's  express  declaration  to  tell  us  he  is  far  better 
practiced  than  I  am  (though  probably,  without  another  ex- 
press declaration,  no  one  would  have  suspected  that  his  con- 
troversial fires  are  burning  low)  is  already  satiated. 

In  "Elysium"  we  conduct  scientific  discussions  in  a 
different  medium,   and  we    are  liable  to    threatenings  of 


96  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

asphyxia  in  that  "  atmosphere  of  contention  "  in  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  been  able  to  live,  alert  and  vigorous  beyond 
the  common  race  of  men,  as  if  it  were  purest  mountain  air. 
I  trust  that  he  may  long  continue  to  seek  truth,  under  the 
difficult  conditions  he  has  chosen  for  the  search,  with  un- 
abated energy — I  had  almost  said  fire — 

May  age  not  wither  him,  nor  custom  stale 
His  infinite  variety. 

But  Elysium  suits  my  less  robust  constitution  better,  and 
I  beg  leave  to  retire  thither,  not  sorry  for  my  experience 
of  the  other  region — no  one  should  regret  experience — but 
determined  not  to  repeat  it,  at  any  rate  in  reference  to  the 
"  plea  of  revelation." 

Note  on  the  Proper  Sense  op  the  "Mosaic"  Narrative 

op  the  Creation. 

It  has  been  objected  to  my  argument  from  Leviticus  (p.  78), 
that  the  Hebrew  words  translated  by  "creeping  things"  in 
Genesis  i.  24  and  Leviticus  xi.  29,  are  different ;  namely,  "  reh- 
mes "  in  the  former,  "  sheh-retz  "  in  the  latter.  The  obvious 
reply  to  this  objection  is  that  the  question  is  not  one  of  words 
but  of  the  meaning  of  words.  To  borrow  an  illustration  from 
our  own  language,  if  "  crawling  things  "  had  been  used  by  the 
translators  in  Genesis  and  "  creeping  things "  in  Leviticus,  it 
would  not  have  been  necessarily  implied  that  they  intended  to 
denote  different  groups  of  animals.  "  Sheh-retz  "  is  employed 
in  a  wider  sense  than  "  reh-mes."  There  are  "  sheh-retz  "  of  the 
waters,  of  the  earth,  of  the  air,  and  of  the  land.  Leviticus 
speaks  of  land  reptiles,  among  other  animals,  as  "  sheh-retz  " ; 
Genesis  speaks  of  all  creeping  land  animals,  among  which  land 
reptiles  are  necessarily  included,  as  "reh-mes."  Our  transla- 
tors, therefore,  have  given  the  true  sense  when  they  render 
both  "  sheh-retz  "  and  "  reh-mes  "  by  "  creeping  things." 

Having  taken  a  good  deal  of  trouble  to  show  what  Genesis 
i.-ii.  4  does  not  mean,  in  the  preceding  pages,  perhaps  it  may 
be  well  that  I  should  briefly  give  my  opinion  as  to  what  it  does 
mean.     I  conceive  that  the  unknown  author  of  this  part  of  the 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  97 

Hexateuchal  compilation  believed,  and  meant  his  readers  to  be- 
lieve, that  his  words,  as  they  understood  them — that  is  to  say, 
in  their  ordinary  natural  sense — conveyed  the  "actual  historical 
truth."  When  he  says  that  such  and  such  things  happened,  I 
believe  him  to  mean  that  they  actually  occurred  and  not  that  he 
imagined  or  dreamed  them ;  when  he  says  "  day,"  I  believe  he 
uses  the  word  in  the  popular  sense;  when  he  says  "  made"  or 
rt  created,"  I  believe  he  means  that  they  came  into  being  by  a 
process  analogous  to  that  which  the  people  whom  he  addressed 
called  "making"  or  "creating";  and  I  think  that,  unless  we 
forget  our  present  knowledge  of  nature;  and,  putting  ourselves 
back  into  the  position  of  a  Phoenician  or  a  Chaldsean  philoso- 
pher, start  from  his  conception  of  the  world,  we  shall  fail  to 
grasp  the  meaning  of  the  Hebrew  writer.  We  must  conceive 
the  earth  to  be  an  immovable,  more  or  less  flattened,  body, 
with  the  vault  of  heaven  above,  the  watery  abyss  below  and 
around.  We  must  imagine  sun,  moon,  and  stars  to  be  "set"  in 
a  "firmament"  with,  or  in,  which  they  move;  and  above  which 
is  yet  another  watery  mass.  We  must  consider  "  light "  and 
4<  darkness  "  to  be  things,  the  alternation  of  which  constitutes  day 
and  night,  independently  of  the  existence  of  sun,  moon,  and 
stars.  We  must  further  suppose  that,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
story  of  the  deluge,  the  Hebrew  writer  was  acquainted  with  a 
Gentile  (probably  Chaldasan  or  Accadian)  account  of  the  origin 
of  things,  in  which  he  substantially  believed,  but  which  he 
stripped  of  all  its  idolatrous  associations  by  substituting  "  ElO- 
him  "  for  Ea,  Anu,  Bel,  and  the  like. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  first  verse  strikes  the  keynote 
of  the  whole.  In  the  beginning  "  Elohim  *  created  the  heaven 
and  the  earth."  Heaven  and  earth  were  not  primitive  exist- 
ences from  which  the  gods  proceeded,  as  the  Gentiles  taught ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  "  Powers  "  preceded  and  created  heaven 
and  earth.  Whether  by  "creation"  is  meant  " causing  to  be 
where  nothing  was  before  "  or  "  shaping  of  something  which 
pre-existed,"  seems  to  me  to  be  an  insoluble  question. 

As  I  have  pointed  out,  the  second  verse  has  an  interesting 
parallel  in  Jeremiah  iv.  23 :  "I  beheld  the  earth,  and,  lo,  it  was 
waste  and  void;  and  the  heavens,  and  they  had  no  light."    I 

*  For  the  sense  of  the  term  "  Elohim,"  see  p.  141. 
6 


98  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

conceive  that  there  is  no  more  allusion  to  chaos  in  the  one  than 
in  the  other.  The  earth-disk  lay  in  its  watery  envelope,  like 
the  yolk  of  an  egg  in  the  glaire,  and  the  spirit,  or  breath,  of 
Elohim  stirred  the  mass.  Light  was  created  as  a  thing  by 
itself ;  and  its  antithesis  "  darkness  "  as  another  thing.  It  was 
supposed  to  be  the  nature  of  these  two  to  alternate,  and  a  pair 
of  alternations  constituted  a  "  day  "  in  the  sense  of  an  unit  of 
time. 

The  next  step  was,  necessarily,  the  formation  of  that  "  firma- 
ment," or  dome  over  the  earth-disk,  which  was  supposed  to 
support  the  celestial  waters ;  and  in  which  sun,  moon,  and  stars 
were  conceived  to  be  set,  as  in  a  sort  of  orrery.  The  earth  was 
still  surrounded  and  covered  by  the  lower  waters,  but  the  upper 
were  separated  from  it  by  the  "  firmanent,"  beneath  which  what 
we  call  the  air  lay.  A  second  alternation  of  darkness  and  light 
marks  the  lapse  of  time. 

After  this,  the  waters  which  covered  the  earth-disk,  under  the 
firmament,  were  drawn  away  into  certain  regions,  which  be- 
came seas,  while  the  part  laid  bare  became  dry  land.  In  ac- 
cordance with  the  notion,  universally  accepted  in  antiquity, 
that  moist  earth  possesses  the  potentiality  of  giving  rise  to  liv- 
ing beings,  the  land,  at  the  command  of  Elohim,  "  put  forth  " 
all  sorts  of  plants.  They  are  made  to  appear  thus  early,  not,  I 
apprehend,  from  any  notion  that  plants  are  lower  in  the  scale 
of  being  than  animals  (which  would  seem  to  be  inconsistent 
with  the  prevalence  of  tree  worship  among  ancient  people)  but 
rather  because  animals  obviously  depend  on  plants;  and  be- 
cause, without  crops  and  harvests,  there  seemed  to  be  no  par- 
ticular need  of  heavenly  signs  for  the  seasons. 

These  were  provided  by  the  fourth  day's  work.  Light  ex- 
isted already ;  but  now  vehicles  for  the  distribution  of  light,  in 
a  special  manner  and  with  varying  degrees  of  intensity,  were 
provided.  I  conceive  that  the  previous  alternations  of  light 
and  darkness  were  supposed  to  go  on ;  but  that  the  ''  light "  was 
strengthened  during  the  daytime  by  the  sun,  which,  as  a  source 
of  heat  as  well  as  of  light,  glided  up  the  firmament  from  the 
east,  and  slid  down  in  the  west,  each  day.  Very  probably  each 
day's  sun  was  supposed  to  be  a  new  one.  And,  as  the  light  of 
the  day  was  strengthened  by  the  sun,  so  the  darkness  of  the 
night  was  weakened  by  the  moon,  which  regularly  waxed  and 


MR.  GLADSTONE  AND  GENESIS.  99 

waned  every  month.  The  stars  are,  as  it  were,  thrown  in. 
And  nothing  can  more  sharply  mark  the  doctrinal  purpose  of 
the  author,  than  the  manner  in  which  he  deals  with  the  heav- 
enly bodies,  which  the  Gentiles  identified  so  closely  with  their 
gods,  as  if  they  were  mere  accessories  to  the  almanac. 

Animals  come  next  in  order  of  creation,  and  the  general 
notion  of  the  writer  seems  to  be  that  they  were  produced  by 
the  medium  in  which  they  live;  that  is  to  say,  the  aquatic 
animals  by  the  waters  and  the  terrestrial  animals  by  the  land. 
But  there  was  a  difficulty  about  flying  things,  such  as  bats, 
birds,  and  insects.  The  cosmogonist  seems  to  have  had  no  con- 
ception of  "  air  "  as  an  elemental  body.  His  "  elements  "  are 
earth  and  water,  and  he  ignores  air  as  much  as  he  does  fire. 
Birds  "  fly  above  the  earth  in  the  open  firmament "  or  "  on  the 
face  of  the  expanse"  of  heaven.  They  are  not  said  to  fly 
through  the  air.  The  choice  of  a  generative  medium  for  flying 
things,  therefore,  seemed  to  lie  between  water  and  earth ;  and,  if 
we  take  into  account  the  conspicuousness  of  the  great  flocks 
of  water-birds  and  the  swarms  of  winged  insects,  which  appear 
to  arise  from  water,  I  think  the  preference  of  water  becomes  in- 
telligible. However,  I  do  not  put  this  forward  as  more  than  a 
probable  hypothesis.  As  to  the  creation  of  aquatic  animals  on 
the  fifth,  that  of  land  animals  on  the  sixth  day,  and  that  of  man 
last  of  all,  I  presume  the  order  was  determined  by  the  fact  that 
man  could  hardly  receive  dominion  over  the  living  world  be- 
fore it  existed ;  and  that  the  "  cattle  "  were  not  wanted  until  he 
was  about  to  make  his  appearance.  The  other  terrestrial  ani- 
mals would  naturally  be  associated  with  the  cattle. 

The  absurdity  of  imagining  that  any  conception,  analogous 
to  that  of  a  zoological  classification,  was  in  the  mind  of  the 
writer  will  be  apparent,  when  we  consider  that  the  fifth  day's 
work  must  include  the  zoologist's  Cetacea,  Sirenia,  and  seals,* 
all  of  which  are  Mammalia  ;  all  birds,  turtles,  sea-snakes,  and, 
presumably,  the  fresh- water  Reptilia  and  Amphibia  ;  with  the 
great  majority  of  Invertebrata. 

The  creation  of  man  is  announced  as  a  separate  act,  resulting 
from  a  particular  resolution  of  Elohim  to  "  make  man  in  our 
image,   after  our  likeness."     To  learn  what  this  remarkable 

*  Perhaps  even  hippotamuses  and  otters ! 


100  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

phrase  means  we  must  turn  to  the  fifth  chapter  of  Genesis,  the 
work  of  the  same  writer.  "  In  the  day  that  Elohim  created 
man,  in  the  likeness  of  Elohim  made  he  him ;  male  and  female 
created  he  them ;  and  blessed  them  and  called  their  name  Adam 
in  the  day  when  they  were  created.  And  Adam  lived  an 
hundred  and  thirty  years  and  begat  a  son  in  his  own  likeness, 
after  his  image;  and  called  his  name  Seth."  I^nd  it  imposible 
to  read  this  passage  without  being  convinced  that,  when  the 
writer  says  Adam  was  made  in  the  likeness  of  Elohim,  he  means 
the  same  sort  of  likeness  as  when  he  says  that  Seth  was  be- 
gotten in  the  likeness  of  Adam.  Whence  it  follows  that  his 
conception  of  Elohim  was  completely  anthropomorphic. 

In  all  this  narrative  I  can  discover  nothing  which  differen- 
tiates it,  in  principle,  from  other  ancient  cosmogonies,  except 
the  rejection  of  all  gods,  save  the  vague,  yet  anthropomorphic, 
Elohim,  and  the  assigning  to  them  anteriority  and  superiority 
to  the  world.  It  is  as  utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  assured 
truths  of  modern  science,  as  it  is  with  the  account  of  the  origin 
of  man,  plants,  and  animals  given  by  the  writer  of  the  second 
chief  constituent  of  the  Hexateuch  in  the  second  chapter  of 
Genesis.  This  extraordinary  story  starts  with  the  assumption 
of  the  existence  of  a  rainless  earth,  devoid  of  plants  and  herbs 
of  the  field.  The  creation  of  living  beings  begins  with  that  of 
a  solitary  man ;  the  next  thing  that  happens  is  the  laying  out 
of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  the  causing  the  growth  from  its 
soil  of  every  tree  "  that  is  pleasant  to  the  sight  and  good  for 
food";  the  third  act  is  the  formation  out  of  the  ground  of 
"every  beast  of  the  field,  and  every  fowl  of  the  air";  the  fourth 
and  last,  the  manufacture  of  the  first  woman  from  a  rib,  ex- 
tracted from  Adam,  while  in  a  state  of  anaesthesia. 

Yet  there  are  people  who  not  only  profess  to  take  this  mon- 
strous legend  seriously ;  but  who  declare  it  to  be  reconcilable 
with  the  Elohistic  account  of  the  creation ! 


IV. 

THE   EVOLUTION"  OE  THEOLOGY :   AN  ANTHRO- 
POLOGICAL STUDY. 

I  conceive  that  the  origin,  the  growth,  the  decline,  and 
the  fall  of  those  speculations  respecting  the  existence,  the 
powers,  and  the  dispositions  of  beings  analogous  to  men,  but 
more  or  less  devoid  of  corporeal  qualities,  which  may  be 
broadly  included  under  the  head  of  theology,  are  phenomena 
the  study  of  which  legitimately  falls  within  the  province  of 
the  anthropologist.  And  it  is  purely  as  a  question  of  anthro- 
pology (a  department  of  biology  to  which  I  have  at  various 
times  given  a  good  deal  of  attention)  that  I  propose  to  treat 
of  the  evolution  of  theology  in  the  following  pages. 

With  theology  as  a  code  of  dogmas  which  are  to  be  be- 
lieved, or  at  any  rate  repeated,  under  penalty  of  present  or 
future  punishment,  or  as  a  storehouse  of  anaesthetics  for  those 
who  find  the  pains  of  life  too  hard  to  bear,  I  have  nothing  to 
do ;  and,  so  far  as  it  may  be  possible,  I  shall  avoid  the  ex- 
pression of  any  opinion  as  to  the  objective  truth  or  falsehood 
of  the  systems  of  theological  speculation  of  which  I  may  find 
occasion  to  speak.  Erom  my  present  point  of  view,  theology 
is  regarded  as  a  natural  product  of  the  operations  of  the 
human  mind,  under  the  conditions  of  its  existence,  just  as 
any  other  branch  of  science,  or  the  arts  of  architecture,  or 
music,  or  painting  are  such  products.  Like  them,  theology 
has  a  history.  Like  them  also,  it  is  to  be  met  with  in  certain 
simple  and  rudimentary  forms ;  and  these  can  be  connected 
by  a  multitude  of  gradations,  which  exist  or  have  existed, 


102  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

among  people  of  various  ages  and  races,  with  the  most  highly 
developed  theologies  of  past  and  present  times.  It  is  not  my 
object  to  interfere,  even  in  the  slightest  degree,  with  beliefs 
which  anybody  holds  sacred ;  or  to  alter  the  conviction  of  any 
one  who  is  of  opinion  that,  in  dealing  with  theology,  we  ought 
to  be  guided  by  considerations  different  from  those  which 
would  be  thought  appropriate  if  the  problem  lay  in  the  prov- 
ince of  chemistry  or  of  mineralogy.  And  if  people  of  these 
ways  of  thinking  choose  to  read  beyond  the  present  paragraph, 
the  responsibility  for  meeting  with  anything  they  may  dislike 
rests  with  them  and  not  with  me. 

We  are  all  likely  to  be  more  familiar  with  the  theological 
history  of  the  Israelites  than  with  that  of  any  other  nation. 
We  may  therefore  fitly  make  it  the  first  object  of  our  studies ; 
and  it  will  be  convenient  to  commence  with  that  period 
which  lies  between  the  invasion  of  Canaan  and  the  early  days 
of  the  monarchy,  and  answers  to  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries  B.  c.  or  thereabouts.  The  evidence  on  which  any 
conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  Israelitic  theology  in  those 
days  must  be  based  is  wholly  contained  in  the  Hebrew  Script- 
ures— an  agglomeration  of  documents  which  certainly  be- 
long to  very  different  ages,  but  of  the  exact  dates  and  author- 
ship of  any  one  of  which  (except  perhaps  one  or  two  of  the 
prophetical  writings)  there  is  no  evidence,  either  internal  or 
external,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  of  such  a  nature  as  to  jus- 
tify more  than  a  confession  of  ignorance,  or,  at  most,  an  ap- 
proximate conclusion.  In  this  venerable  record  of  ancient 
life,  miscalled  a  book,  when  it  is  really  a  library  comparable 
to  a  selection  of  works  from  English  literature  between  the 
times  of  Beda  and  those  of  Milton,  we  have  the  stratified  de- 
posits (often  confused  and  even  with  their  natural  order  in- 
verted) left  by  the  stream  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  life 
of  Israel  during  many  centuries.  And,  imbedded  in  these 
strata,  there  are  numerous  remains  of  forms  of  thought 
which  once  lived,  and  which,  though  often  unfortunately  mere 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  103 

fragments,  are  of  priceless  value  to  the  anthropologist.  Our 
task  is  to  rescue  these  from  their  relatively  unimportant  sur- 
roundings, and  by  careful  comparison  with  existing  forms  of 
theology  to  make  the  dead  world  which  they  record  live 
again.  In  other  words,  our  problem  is  palaeontological,  and 
the  method  pursued  must  be  the  same  as  that  employed  in 
dealing  with  other  fossil  remains. 

Among  the  richest  of  the  fossiliferous  strata  to  which  I 
have  alluded  are  the  books  of  Judges  and  Samuel.*  It  has 
often  been  observed  that  these  writings  stand  out,  in  marked 
relief  from  those  which  precede  and  follow  them,  in  virtue  of 
a  certain  archaic  freshness  and  of  a  greater  freedom  from 
traces  of  late  interpolation  and  editorial  trimming.  Jeph- 
thah,  Gideon,  and  Samson  are  men  of  old  heroic  stamp,  who 
would  look  as  much  in  place  in  a  Norse  Saga  as  where  they 
are ;  and  if  the  varnish-brush  of  later  respectability  has 
passed  over  these  memoirs  of  the  mighty  men  of  a  wild  age, 
here  and  there,  it  has  not  succeeded  in  effacing,  or  even  in 
seriously  obscuring,  the  essential  characteristics  of  the  theol- 
ogy traditionally  ascribed  to  their  epoch. 

There  is  nothing  that  I  have  met  with  in  the  results  of 
Biblical  criticism  inconsistent  with  the  conviction  that  these 
books  give  us  a  fairly  trustworthy  account  of  Israelitic  life 
and  thought  in  the  times  which  they  cover;  and,  as  such, 
apart  from  the  great  literary  merit  of  many  of  their  episodes, 
they  possess  the  interest  of  being,  perhaps,  the  oldest  genuine 
history,  as  apart  from  mere  chronicles  on  the  one  hand  and 
mere  legends  on  the  other,  at  present  accessible  to  us. 

*  Even  the  most  sturdy  believers  in  the  popular  theory  that  the 
proper  or  titular  names  attached  to  the  books  of  the  Bible  are  those  of 
their  authors  will  hardly  be  prepared  to  maintain  that  Jephthah,  Gideon, 
and  their  colleagues  wrote  the  book  of  Judges.  Nor  is  it  easily  admis- 
sible that  Samuel  wrote  the  two  books  which  pass  under  his  name,  one 
of  which  deals  entirely  with  events  which  took  place  after  his  death.  In 
fact,  no  one  knows  who  wrote  either  Judges  or  Samuel,  nor  when,  within 
the  range  of  100  years,  their  present  form  was  given  to  these  books. 


104  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

-But  it  is  often  said  with  exultation  by  writers  of  one 
party,  and  often  admitted,  more  or  less  unwillingly,  by  their 
opponents,  that  these  books  are  untrustworthy,  by  reason  of 
being  full  of  obviously  unhistoric  tales.  And,  as  a  notable 
example,  the  narrative  of  Saul's  visit  to  the  so-called  "  witch 
of  Endor  "  is  often  cited.  As  I  have  already  intimated,  I 
have  nothing  to  do  with  theological  partisanship,  either  het- 
erodox or  orthodox,  nor,  for  my  present  purpose,  does  it  mat- 
ter very  much  whether  the  story  is  historically  true,  or 
whether  it  merely  shows  what  the  writer  believed ;  but,  look- 
ing at  the  matter  solely  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  anthro- 
pologist, I  beg  leave  to  express  the  opinion  that  the  account 
of  Saul's  necromantic  expedition  is  quite  consistent  with 
probability.  That  is  to  say,  I  see  no  reason  whatever  to 
doubt,  firstly,  that  Saul  made  such  a  visit;  and,  secondly, 
that  he  and  all  who  were  present,  including  the  wise  woman 
of  Endor  herself,  would  have  given,  with  entire  sincerity, 
very  much  the  same  account  of  the  business  as  that  which  we 
now  read  in  the  twenty-eighth  chapter  of  the  first  book  of 
Samuel ;  and  I  am  further  of  opinion  that  this  story  is  one 
of  the  most  important  of  those  fossils,  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred, in  the  material  which  it  offers  for  the  reconstruction 
of  the  theology  of  the  time.  Let  us  therefore  study  it  atten- 
tively— not  merely  as  a  narrative  which,  in  the  dramatic 
force  of  its  grewsome  simplicity,  is  not  surpassed,  if  it  is 
equaled,  by  the  witch  scenes  in  Macbeth — but  as  a  piece  of 
evidence  bearing  on  an  important  anthropological  problem. 

We  are  told  (1  Sam.  xxviii.)  that  Saul,  encamped  at  Gil- 
boa,  became  alarmed  by  the  strength  of  the  Philistine  army 
gathered  at  Shunem.  He  therefore  "inquired  of  Jahveh," 
but  "  Jahveh  answered  him  not,  neither  by  dreams,  nor  by 
Urim,  nor  by  prophets."  *  Thus  deserted  by  Jahveh,  Saul, 
in  his  extremity,  bethought  him  of  "  those  that  had  familiar 

*  My  citations  are  taken  from  the  Revised  Version,  but  for  Lord 
and  God  I  have  substituted  Jahveh  and  Elohim. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  105 

spirits,  and  the  wizards,"  whom  he  is  said  at  some  previous 
time,  to  have  "  put  out  of  the  land  " ;  but  who  seem,  never- 
theless, to  have  been  very  imperfectly  banished,  since  Saul's 
servants,  in  answer  to  his  command  to  seek  him  a  woman 
"  that  hath  a  familiar  spirit,"  reply  without  a  sign  of  hesita- 
tion or  of  fear,  "  Behold,  there  is  a  woman  that  hath  a  famil- 
iar spirit  at  Endor  " ;  just  as,  in  some  parts  of  England,  a 
countryman  might  tell  any  one  who  did  not  look  like  a  mag- 
istrate or  a  policeman,  where  a  "  wise  woman  "  was  to  be  met 
with.  Saul  goes  to  this  woman,  who,  after  being  assured  of 
immunity,  asks,  "Whom  shall  I  bring  up  to  thee?"  where- 
upon Saul  says, "  Bring  me  up  Samuel."  The  woman  imme- 
diately sees  an  apparition.  But  to  Saul  nothing  is  visible, 
for  he  asks,  "  What  seest  thou  ?  "  And  the  woman  replies, 
"  I  see  Elohim  coming  up  out  of  the  earth."  Still  the  spec- 
ter remains  invisible  to  Saul,  for  he  asks,  "  What  form  is  he 
of  ?  "  And  she  replies,  "  An  old  man  cometh  up,  and  he  is 
covered  with  a  robe."  So  far,  therefore,  the  wise  woman  un- 
questionably plays  the  part  of  a  "  medium,"  and  Saul  is  de- 
pendent upon  her  version  of  what  happens. 
The  account  continues : — 

And  Saul  perceived  that  it  was  Samuel,  and  he  bowed  with 
his  face  to  the  ground  and  did  obeisance.  And  Samuel  said  to 
Saul,  Why  hast  thou  disquieted  me  to  bring  me  up?  And  Saul 
answered,  I  am  sore  distressed:  for  the  Philistines  make  war 
against  me,  and  Elohim  is  departed  from  me  and  answereth  me 
no  more,  neither  by  prophets  nor  by  dreams ;  therefore  I  have 
called  thee  that  thou  mayest  make  known  unto  me  what  I  shaU 
do.  And  Samuel  said,  Wherefore  then  dost  thou  ask  of  me, 
seeing  that  Jahveh  is  departed  from  thee  and  is  become  thine 
adversary?  And  Jahveh  hath  wrought  for  himself,  as  he  spake 
by  me,  and  Jahveh  hath  rent  the  kingdom  out  of  thine  hand 
and  given  it  to  thy  neighbor,  even  to  David.  Because  thou 
obeyedst  not  the  voice  of  Jahveh  and  didst  not  execute  his  fierce 
wrath  upon  Amalek,  therefore  hath  Jahveh  done  this  thing  unto 
thee  this  day.  Moreover,  Jahveh  wiH  deliver  Israel  also  with 
thee  into  the  hand  of  the  Philistines ;  and  to-morrow  shalt  thou 


106  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  thy  sons  be  with  me :  Jahveh  shall  deliver  the  host  of  Israel 
also  into  the  hand  of  the  Philistines.  Then  Saul  fell  straight- 
way his  full  length  upon  the  earth  and  was  sore  afraid  because 
of  the  words  of  Samnel  ...     (v.  14-20). 

The  statement  that  Saul  "  perceived  "  that  it  was  Samuel 
is  not  to  be  taken  to  imply  that,  even  now,  Saul  actually  saw 
the  shade  of  the  prophet,  but  only  that  the  woman's  allusion 
to  the  prophetic  mantle  and  to  the  aged  appearance  of  the 
specter  convinced  him  that  it  was  Samuel.  Eeuss  *  in  fact 
translates  the  passage  "  Alors  Saul  reconnut  que  c'etait  Sam- 
uel." Nor  does  the  dialogue  between  Saul  and  Samuel  neces- 
sarily, or  probably,  signify  that  Samuel  spoke  otherwise  than 
by  the  voice  of  the  wise  woman.  The  Septuagint  does  not 
hesitate  to  call  her  eyyao-Tpi/xu0os,  that  is  to  say,  ventriloquist, 
implying  that  it  was  she  who  spoke — and  this  view  of  the 
matter  is  in  harmony  with  the  fact  that  the  exact  sense  of 
the  Hebrew  words  which  are  translated  as  "  a  woman  that 
hath  a  familiar  spirit "  is  "  a  woman  mistress  of  Ob."  Ob 
means  primitively  a  leather  bottle,  such  as  a  wine  skin,  and 
is  applied  alike  to  the  necromancer  and  to  the  spirit  evoked. 
Its  use,  in  these  senses,  appears  to  have  been  suggested  by 
the  likeness  of  the  hollow  sound  emitted  by  a  half-empty  skin 
when  struck,  to  the  sepulchral  tones  in  which  the  oracles  of 
the  evoked  spirits  were  uttered  by  the  medium.  It  is  most 
probable  that,  in  accordance  with  the  general  theory  of  spirit- 
ual influences  which  obtained  among  the  old  Israelites,  the 
spirit  of  Samuel  was  conceived  to  pass  into  the  body  of  the 
wise  woman,  and  to  use  her  vocal  organs  to  speak  in  his  own 

*  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  depend  upon  authoritative  Biblical  critics, 
■whenever  a  question  of  interpretation  of  the  text  arises.  As  Reuss  ap- 
pears to  me  to  be  one  of  the  most  learned,  acute,  and  fair-minded  of 
those  whose  works  I  have  studied,  I  have  made  most  use  of  the  com- 
mentary and  dissertations  in  his  splendid  French  edition  of  the  Bible. 
But  I  have  also  had  recourse  to  the  works  of  Dillman,  Kalisch,  Kuenen, 
Thenius,  Tuch,  and  others,  in  cases  in  which  another  opinion  seemed  de- 
sirable. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        107 

name — for  I  can  not  discover  that  they  drew  any  clear  dis- 
tinction between  possession  and  inspiration.* 

If  the  story  of  Saul's  consultation  of  the  occult  powers  is 
to  be  regarded  as  an  authentic  narrative,  or,  at  any  rate,  as  a 
statement  which  is  perfectly  veracious  so  far  as  the  intention 
of  the  narrator  goes — and,  as  I  have  said,  I  see  no  reason  for 
refusing  it  this  character — it  will  be  found,  on  further  con- 
sideration, to  throw  a  flood  of  light,  both  directly  and  indi- 
rectly, on  the  theology  of  Saul's  countrymen — that  is  to  say, 
upon  their  beliefs  respecting  the  nature  and  ways  of  spiritual 
beings. 

Even  without  the  confirmation  of  other  abundant  evi- 
dences to  the  same  effect,  it  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  exist- 
ence, among  them,  of  the  fundamental  doctrine  that  man 
consists  of  a  body  and  of  a  spirit,  which  last,  after  the  death 
of  the  body,  continues  to  exist  as  a  ghost.  At  the  time  of 
Saul's  visit  to  Endor,  Samuel  was  dead  and  buried ;  but  that 
his  spirit  would  be  believed  to  continue  to  exist  in  Sheol  may 
be  concluded  from  the  well-known  passage  in  the  song  attrib- 
uted to  Hannah,  his  mother : — 

Jahveh  killeth  and  maketh  alive, 

He  brhigeth  down  to  Sheol  and  bringeth  up 

(1  Sam.  ii.  6). 

And  it  is  obvious  that  this  Sheol  was  thought  to  be  a  place 
underground  in  which  Samuel's  spirit  had  been  disturbed  by 
the  necromancer's  summons,  and  in  which,  after  his  return 
thither,  he  would  be  joined  by  the  spirits  of  Saul  and  his  sons 
when  they  had  met  with  their  bodily  death  on  the  hill  of  Gil- 
boa.  It  is  further  to  be  observed  that  the  spirit,  or  ghost,  of 
the  dead  man  presents  itself  as  the  image  of  the  man  himself 
— it  is  the  man  not  merely  in  his  ordinary  corporeal  present- 
ment (even  down  to  the  prophet's  mantle)  but  in  his  moral 

*  See  "  Divination,"  by  Hazoral,  Journal  of  Anthropology,  Bombay 
vol.  i.  No.  1. 


108  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  intellectual  characteristics.  Samuel,  who  had  begun  as 
Saul's  friend  and  ended  as  his  bitter  enemy,  gives  it  to  be 
understood  that  he  is  annoyed  at  Saul's  presumption  in  dis- 
turbing him ;  and  that,  in  Sheol,  he  is  as  much  the  devoted 
servant  of  Jahveh  and  as  much  empowered  to  speak  in  Jah- 
veh's  name  as  he  was  during  his  sojourn  in  the  upper  air. 

It  appears  now  to  be  universally  admitted  that,  before  the 
exile,  the  Israelites  had  no  belief  in  rewards  and  punishments 
after  death,  nor  in  anything  similar  to  the  Christian  heaven 
and  hell ;  but  our  story  proves  that  it  would  be  an  error  to 
suppose  that  they  did  not  believe  in  the  continuance  of  indi- 
vidual existence  after  death  by  a  ghostly  simulacrum  of  life. 
ISTay,  I  think  it  would  be  very  hard  to  produce  conclusive  evi- 
dence that  they  disbelieved  in  immortality ;  for  I  am  not 
aware  that  there  is  anything  to  show  that  they  thought  the 
existence  of  the  souls  of  the  dead  in  Sheol  ever  came  to  an 
end.  But  they  do  not  seem  to  have  conceived  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  souls  in  Sheol  was  in  any  way  affected  by  their 
conduct  in  life.  If  there  was  immortality,  there  was  no  state 
of  retribution  in  their  theology.  Samuel  expects  Saul  and 
his  sons  to  come  to  him  in  Sheol. 

The  next  circumstance  to  be  remarked  is  that  the  name 
of  Elohim  is  applied  to  the  spirit  which  the  woman  sees 
"  coming  up  out  of  the  earth,"  that  is  to  say,  from  Sheol. 
The  Authorized  Version  translates  this  in  its  literal  sense 
"  gods."  The  Revised  Version  gives  "  god  "  with  "  gods  "  in 
the  margin.  Reuss  renders  the  word  by  "  specter,"  remark- 
ing in  a  note  that  it  is  not  quite  exact ;  but  that  the  word 
Elohim  expresses  "  something  divine,  that  is  to  say,  super- 
human, commanding  respect  and  terror  "  (Histoire  des  Isra- 
elites, p.  321).  Tuch,  in  his  commentary  on  Genesis,  and 
Thenius,  in  his  commentary  on  Samuel,  express  substantially 
the  same  opinion.  Dr.  Alexander  (in  Kitto's  Cyclopcedia  s. 
v.  "  God  ")  has  the  following  instructive  remarks : — 

[Elohim  is]  sometimes  used  vaguely  to  describe  unseen  pow- 
ers or  superhuman  beings  that  are  not  properly  thought  of  as 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.       109 

divine.  Thus  the  witch  of  En  dor  saw  "  Elohim  ascending  out 
of  the  earth  "  (1  Sam.  xxviii.  13),  meaning  thereby  some  beings 
of  an  unearthly,  superhuman  character.  So  also  in  Zechariah 
xii.  8,  it  is  said  "  the  house  of  David  shall  be  as  Elohim,  as  the 
ano-el  of  the  Lord."  where,  as  the  transition  from  Elohim  to  the 
angel  of  the  Lord  is  a  minori  ad  majus,  we  must  regard  the 
former  as  a  vague  designation  of  supernatural  powers. 

Dr.  Alexander  speaks  here  of  "  beings  " ;  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  wise  woman  of  Endor  referred  to 
anything  but  a  solitary  specter;  and  it  is  quite  clear  that 
Saul  understood  her  in  this  sense,  for  he  asks,  "  What  form 
is  he  of?" 

This  fact,  that  the  name  of  Elohim  is  applied  to  a  ghost, 
or  disembodied  soul,  conceived  as  the  image  of  the  body  in 
which  it  once  dwelt,  is  of  no  little  importance.  For  it  is  well 
known  that  the  same  term  was  employed  to  denote  the  gods 
of  the  heathen,  who  were  thought  to  have  definite  quasi- 
corporeal  forms  and  to  be  as  much  real  entities  as  any  other 
Elohim.*  The  difference  which  was  supposed  to  exist  be- 
tween the  different  Elohim  was  one  of  degree,  not  one  of 
kind.  Elohim  was,  in  logical  terminology,  the  genus  of  which 
ghosts,  Chemosh,  Dagon,  Baal,  and  Jahveh  were  species.  The 
Israelite  believed  Jahveh  to  be  immeasurably  superior  to  all 
other  kinds  of  Elohim.  The  inscription  on  the  Moabite 
stone  shows  that  King  Mesa  held  Chemosh  to  be,  as  unques- 
tionably, the  superior  of  Jahveh.  But  if  Jahveh  was  thus 
supposed  to  differ  only  in  degree  from  the  undoubtedly  zoo- 
morphic  or  anthropomorphic  "  gods  of  the  nations,"  why  is 
it  to  be  assumed  that  he  also  was  not  thought  of  as  having  a 
human  shape  ?    It  is  possible  for  those  who  forget  that  the 

*  See,  for  example,  the  message  of  Jephthah  to  the  King  of  the  Am- 
monites :  "  So  now  Jahveh,  the  Elohim  of  Israel,  hath  dispossessed  the 
Amorites  from  before  his  people  Israel,  and  shouldest  thou  possess  them  1 
Wilt  not  thou  possess  that  which  Chemosh,  thy  Elohim,  giveth  thee  to 
possess  1 "  (Jud.  xi.  23,  24).  For  Jephthah,  Chemosh  is  obviously  as  real 
a  personage  as  Jahveh. 


110  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

time  of  the  great  prophetic  writers  is  at  least  as  remote  from 
that  of  Saul  as  our  day  is  from  that  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  to 
insist  upon  interpreting  the  gross  notions  current  in  the  ear- 
lier age  and  among  the  mass  of  the  people  by  the  refined  con- 
ceptions promulgated  by  a  few  select  spirits  centuries  later. 
But  if  we  take  the  language  constantly  used  concerning  the 
Deity  in  the  books  of  Genesis,  Exodus,  Joshua,  Judges, 
Samuel,  or  Kings,  in  its  natural  sense  (and  I  am  aware  of  no 
valid  reason  which  can  be  given  for  taking  it  in  any  other 
sense),  there  can  not,  to  my  mind,  be  a  doubt  that  Jahveh 
was  conceived  by  those  from  whom  the  substance  of  these 
books  is  mainly  derived,  to  possess  the  appearance  and  the 
intellectual  and  moral  attributes  of  a  man ;  and,  indeed,  of  a 
man  of  just  that  type  with  which  the  Israelites  were  familiar 
in  their  stronger  and  intellectually  abler  rulers  and  leaders. 
In  a  well-known  passage  of  Genesis  (i.  27)  Elohim  is  said  to 
have  "  created  man  in  his  own  image,  in  the  image  of  Elohim 
created  he  him."  It  is  "  man  "  who  is  here  said  to  be  the 
image  of  Elohim — not  man's  soul  alone,  still  less  his  "  reason," 
but  the  whole  man.  It  is  obvious  that  for  those  who  called 
a  manlike  ghost  Elohim,  there  could  be  no  difficulty  in  con- 
ceiving any  other  Elohim  under  the  same  aspect.  And  if 
there  could  be  any  doubt  on  this  subject,  surely  it  can  not 
stand  in  the  face  of  what  we  find  in  the  fifth  chapter,  where, 
immediately  after  a  repetition  of  the  statement  that  "  Elohim 
created  man,  in  the  likeness  of  Elohim  made  he  him,"  it  is 
said  that  Adam  begat  Seth  "  in  his  own  likeness,  after  his 
image."  Does  this  mean  that  Seth  resembled  Adam  only  in  a 
spiritual  and  figurative  sense  ?  And  if  that  interpretation  of 
the  third  verse  of  the  fifth  chapter  of  Genesis  is  absurd,  why 
does  it  become  reasonable  in  the  first  verse  of  the  same  chapter? 
But  let  us  go  further.  Is  not  the  Jahveh  who  "  walks  in 
the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day " ;  from  whom  one  may 
hope  to  "  hide  one's  self  among  the  trees  " ;  of  whom  it  is  ex- 
pressly said  that  "  Moses  and  Aaron,  Nadab  and  Abihu,  and 
seventy  of  the  elders  of  Israel,"  saw  the  Elohim  of  Israel 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        m 

(Exod.  xxiy.  9-11) ;  and  that,  although  the  seeing  Jahveh 
was  understood  to  be  a  high  crime  and  misdemeanor,  worthy 
of  death,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  yet,  for  this  once,  he 
"  laid  not  his  hand  on  the  nobles  of  Israel  " ;  "  that  they  be- 
held Elohim  and  did  eat  and  drink ; "  and  that  afterward 
Moses  saw  his  back  (Exod.  xxxiii.  23) — is  not  this  Deity  con- 
ceived as  manlike  in  form  ?  Again,  is  not  the  Jahveh  who 
eats  with  Abraham  under  the  oaks  at  Mamre,  who  is  pleased 
with  the  "  sweet  savor  "  of  Noah's  sacrifice,  to  whom  sacrifices 
are  said  to  be  "  food  "  * — is  not  this  Deity  depicted  as  pos- 
sessed of  human  appetites?  If  this  were  not  the  current 
Israelitish  idea  of  Jahveh  even  in  the  eighth  century  b.  c, 
where  is  the  point  of  Isaiah's  scathing  admonitions  to  his 
countrymen :  "  To  what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your 
sacrifices  unto  me  ?  saith  Jahveh  :  I  am  full  of  the  burnt- 
offerings  of  rams  and  the  fat  of  fed  beasts ;  and  I  delight  not 
in  the  blood  of  bullocks,  or  of  lambs,  or  of  he-goats  "  (Isa.  i. 
11).  Or  of  Micah's  inquiry,  "  Will  Jahveh  be  pleased  with 
thousands  of  rams  or  with  ten  thousands  of  rivers  of  oil  ?  " 
(vi.  7).  And  in  the  innumerable  passages  in  which  Jahveh 
is  said  to  be  jealous  of  other  gods,  to  be  angry,  to  be  appeased, 
and  to  repent ;  in  which  he  is  represented  as  casting  oif  Saul 
because  the  king  does  not  quite  literally  execute  a  command 
of  the  most  ruthless  severity ;  or  as  smiting  Uzzah  to  death 
because  the  unfortunate  man  thoughtlessly,  but  naturally 
enough,  put  out  his  hand  to  stay  the  ark  from  falling — can 
any  one  deny  that  the  old  Israelites  conceived  Jahveh  not 
only  in  the  image  of  a  man,  but  in  that  of  a  changeable,  irri- 
table, and,  occasionally,  violent  man?  There  appears  to  me, 
then,  to  be  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  notion  of  likeness  to 
man,  which  was  indubitably  held  of  the  ghost  Elohim,  was 
carried  out  consistently  throughout  the  whole  series  of  Elo- 

*  For  example :  "  My  oblation,  my  food  for  my  offerings  made  by 
fire,  of  a  sweet  savor  to  me,  shall  ye  observe  to  offer  unto  me  in  their 
due  season  "  (Num.  xxviii.  2). 


112  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

him,  and  that  Jahveh-Elohim  was  thought  of  as  a  "being  of 
the  same  substantially  human  nature  as  the  rest,  only  im- 
measurably more  powerful  for  good  and  for  evil. 

The  absence  of  any  real  distinction  between  the  Elohim 
of  different  ranks  is  further  clearly  illustrated  by  the  corre- 
sponding absence  of  any  sharp  delimitation  between  the  vari- 
ous kinds  of  people  who  serve  as  the  media  of  communication 
between  them  and  men.  The  agents  through  whom  the 
lower  Elohim  are  consulted  are  called  necromancers,  wizards, 
and  diviners,  and  are  looked  down  upon  by  the  prophets  and 
priests  of  the  higher  Elohim ;  but  the  "  seer  "  connects  the 
two,  and  they  are  all  alike  in  their  essential  characters  of 
media.  The  wise  woman  of  Endor  was  believed  by  others, 
and,  I  have  little  doubt,  believed  herself,  to  be  able  to  "  bring 
up  "  whom  she  would  from  Sheol,  and  to  be  inspired,  whether 
in  virtue  of  actual  possession  by  the  evoked  Elohim,  or  other- 
wise, with  a  knowledge  of  hidden  things.  I  am  unable  to 
see  that  Saul's  servant  took  any  really  different  view  of  Sam- 
uel's powers,  though  he  may  have  believed  that  he  obtained 
them  by  the  grace  of  the  higher  Elohim.  For  when  Saul 
fails  to  find  his  father's  asses,  his  servant  says  to  him — 

Behold,  there  is  in  this  city  a  man  of  Elohim,  and  he  is  a 
man  that  is  held  in  honor;  all  that  he  saith  cometh  surely  to 
pass:  now  let  us  go  thither;  perad venture  he  can  tell  us  con- 
cerning our  journey  whereon  we  go.  Then  said  Saul  to  his 
servant,  But  behold  if  we  go,  what  shall  we  bring  the  man?  for 
the  bread  is  spent  in  our  vessels  and  there  is  not  a  present  to 
bring  to  the  man  of  Elohim.  What  have  we?  And  the  serv- 
ant answered  Saul  again  and  said,  Behold  I  have  in  my  hand 
the  fourth  part  of  a  shekel  of  silver :  that  will  I  give  to  the  man 
of  Elohim  to  tell  us  our  way.  (Beforetime  in  Israel  when  a 
man  went  to  inquire  of  Elohim,  then  he  said,  Come  and  let  us 
go  to  the  Seer:  for  he  that  is  now  called  a  Prophet  was  before- 
time  called  a  Seer*)  (1  Sam.  ix.  6-10). 

*  In  2  Samuel  xv.  27  David  says  to  Zadok  the  priest,  "  Art  thou  not 
a  seer  1 "  and  Gad  is  called  David's  seer. 


THE  EVOLUTION    OF  THEOLOGY.  113 

In  fact,  when,  shortly  afterward,  Saul  accidentally  meets 
Samuel,  he  says,  "  Tell  me,  I  pray  thee,  where  the  Seer's 
house  is."  Samuel  answers,  "  I  am  the  Seer."  Immediately 
afterward  Samuel  informs  Saul  that  the  asses  are  found, 
though  how  he  obtained  his  knowledge  of  the  fact  is  not 
stated.  It  will  be  observed  that  Samuel  is  not  spoken  of 
here  as,  in  any  special  sense,  a  seer  or  prophet  of  Jahveh,  but 
as  a  "  man  of  Elohim  " — that  is  to  say,  a  seer  having  access 
to  the  "  spiritual  powers,"  just  as  the  wise  woman  of  Endor 
might  have  been  said  to  be  a  "  woman  of  Elohim  " — and  the 
narrator's  or  editor's  explanatory  note  seems  to  indicate  that 
"  Prophet "  is  merely  a  name,  introduced  later  than  the  time 
of  Samuel,  for  a  superior  kind  of  "  Seer,"  or  "  man  of  Elo- 
him." * 

Another  very  instructive  passage  shows  that  Samuel  was 
not  only  considered  to  be  diviner,  seer,  and  prophet  in  one, 
but  that  he  was  also,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  priest  of 
Jahveh — though,  according  to  his  biographer,  he  was  not  a 
member  of  the  tribe  of  Levi.  At  the  outset  of  their  acquaint- 
ance, Samuel  says  to  Saul,  "  Go  up  before  me  into  the  high 
place,"  where,  as  the  young  maidens  of  the  city  had  just  be- 
fore told  Saul,  the  Seer  was  going,  "  for  the  people  will  not 
eat  till  he  come,  because  he  doth  bless  the  sacrifice  "  (1  Sam. 
x.  12).  The  use  of  the  word  "  bless  "  here — as  if  Samuel 
were  not  going  to  sacrifice,  but  only  to  offer  a  blessing  or 
thanksgiving — is  curious.  But  that  Samuel  really  acted  as 
priest  seems  plain  from  what  follows.  Eor  he  not  only  asks 
Saul  to  share  in  the  customary  sacrificial  feast,  but  he  dis- 
poses in  Saul's  favor  of  that  portion  of  the  victim  which  the 
Levitical  legislation,  doubtless  embodying  old  customs,  recog- 
nizes as  the  priest's  special  property,  f 

*  This  would  at  first  appear  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  use  of  the 
word  "prophetess"  for  Deborah.  But  it  does  not  follow  because  the 
writer  of  Judges  applies  the  name  to  Deborah  that  it  was  used  in  her  day. 

f  Samuel  tells  the  cook,  "  Bring  the  portion  which  I  gave  thee,  of 
which  I  said  to  thee,  Set  it  by  thee."  It  was  therefore  Samuel's  to 
6 


114  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Although  particular  persons  adopted  the  profession  of 
media  between  men  and  Elohim,  there  was  no  limitation  of 
the  power,  in  the  view  of  ancient  Israel,  to  any  special  class 
of  the  population.  Saul  inquires  of  Jahveh  and  builds  him 
altars  on  his  own  account ;  and  in  the  very  remarkable  story 
told  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  the  first  book  of  Samuel  (v. 
37-46),  Saul  appears  to  conduct  the  whole  process  of  divina- 
tion, although  he  has  a  priest  at  his  elbow.  David  seems  to 
do  the  same. 

Moreover,  Elohim  constantly  appear  in  dreams — which  in 
old  Israel  did  not  mean  that,  as  we  should  say,  the  subject  of 
the  appearance  "  dreamed  he  saw  the  spirit " ;  but  that  he 
veritably  saw  the  Elohim  which,  as  a  soul,  visited  his  soul 
while  his  body  was  asleep.  And,  in  the  course  of  the  history 
of  Israel,  Jahveh  himself  thus  appears  to  all  sorts  of  persons, 
non-Israelites  as  well  as  Israelites.  Again,  the  Elohim  pos- 
sess, or  inspire,  people  against  their  will,  as  in  the  case  of 
Saul  and  Saul's  messengers,  and  then  these  people  prophesy 
— that  is  to  say,  "  rave  " — and  exhibit  the  ungoverned  gest- 
ures attributed  by  a  later  age  to  possession  by  malignant 
spirits.  Apart  from  other  evidence  to  be  adduced  by  and  by, 
the  history  of  ancient  demonology  and  of  modern  revivalism 
does  not  permit  me  to  doubt  that  the  accounts  of  these 
phenomena  given  in  the  history  of  Saul  may  be  perfectly 
historical. 

In  the  ritual  practices,  of  which  evidence  is  to  be  found 
in  the  books  of  Judges  and  Samuel,  the  chief  part  is  played 

give.  "  And  the  cook  took  up  the  thigh  (or  shoulder)  and  that  which 
was  upon  it  and  set  it  before  Saul."  But,  in  the  Levitical  regulations, 
it  is  the  thigh  (or  shoulder)  which  becomes  the  priest's  own  property. 
''And  the  right  thigh  (or  shoulder)  shall  ye  give  unto  the  priest  for  an 
heave-offering,"  which  is  given  along  with  the  wave  breast  "  unto 
Aaron  the  priest  and  unto  his  sons  as  a  due  for  ever  from  the  children 
of  Israel  "  (Lev.  viii.  31-34).  Reuss  writes  on  this  passage :  "  La  cuisse 
n'est  point  agitee,  mais  simplement  prelevee  sur  ce  que  les  convives  man- 
geront." 


THE  EVOLUTION   OP   THEOLOGY.  115 

by  sacrifices,  usually  burnt  offerings.  Whenever  the  aid  of 
the  Elohim  of  Israel  is  sought,  or  thanks  are  considered  due 
to  him,  an  altar  is  built,  and  oxen,  sheep,  and  goats  are 
slaughtered. and  offered  up.  Sometimes  the  entire  victim  is 
burned  as  a  holocaust ;  more  frequently  only  certain  parts, 
notably  the  fat  about  the  kidneys,  are  burned  on  the  altar. 
The  rest  is  properly  cooked ;  and,  after  the  reservation  of  a 
part  for  the  priest,  is  made  the  foundation  of  a  joyous  ban- 
quet, in  which  the  sacrificer,  his  family,  and  such  guests  as 
he  thinks  fit  to  invite,  participate.*  Elohim  was  supposed 
to  share  in  the  feast,  and  it  has  been  already  shown  that  that 
which  was  set  apart  on  the  altar,  or  consumed  by  fire,  was 
spoken  of  as  the  food  of  Elohim,  who  was  thought  to  be  in- 
fluenced by  the  costliness,  or  by  the  pleasant  smell,  of  the 
sacrifice  in  favor  of  the  sacrificer. 

All  this  bears  out  the  view  that,  in  the  mind  of  the  old 
Israelite,  there  was  no  difference,  save  one  of  degree,  between 
one  Elohim  and  another.  It  is  true  that  there  is  but  little 
direct  evidence  to  show  that  the  old  Israelites  shared  the 
widespread  belief  of  their  own,  and  indeed  of  all  times,  that 
the  spirits  of  the  dead  not  only  continue  to  exist,  but  are 
capable  of  a  ghostly  kind  of  feeling  and  are  grateful  for  such 
aliment  as  can  be  assimilated  by  their  attenuated  substance, 
and  even  for  clothes,  ornaments,  and  weapons,  f  That  they 
were  familiar  with  this  doctrine  in  the  time  of  the  captivity 
is  suggested  by  the  well-known  reference  of  Ezekiel  (xxxii.  27) 
to  the  "  mighty  that  are  fallen  of  the  uncircumcised,  which 

*  See,  for  example,  Elkanah's  sacrifice,  1  Sam.  i.  3-9. 

f  The  ghost  was  not  supposed  to  be  capable  of  devouring  the  gross 
material  substance  of  the  offering ;  but  his  vaporous  body  appropriated 
the  smoke  of  the  burnt  sacrifice,  the  visible  and  odorous  exhalations  of 
other  offerings.  The  blood  of  the  victim  was  particularly  useful  be- 
cause it  was  thought  to  be  the  special  seat  of  its  soul  or  life.  A  West 
African  negro  replied  to  an  European  skeptic  :  "  Of  course,  the  snirit 
can  not  eat  corporeal  food,  but  he  extracts  its  spiritual  part,  and,  as  we 
see,  leaves  the  material  part  behind  "  (Lippert,  Seelencult,  p.  16). 


116  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

are  gone  down  to  [Sheol]  hell  with  their  weapons  of  war, 
and  have  laid  their  swords  under  their  heads."  Perhaps 
there  is  a  still  earlier  allusion  in  the  "  giving  of  food  for  the 
dead"  spoken  of  in  Deuteronomy  (xxvi.  14).* 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  literature  of  the  old 
Israelites,  as  it  lies  before  us,  has  been  subjected  to  the 
revisal  of  strictly  monotheistic  editors,  violently  opposed  to 
all  kinds  of  idolatry,  who  are  not  likely  to  have  selected  from 
the  materials  at  their  disposal  any  obvious  evidence,  either  of 
the  practice  under  discussion,  or  of  that  ancestor-worship 
which  is  so  closely  related  to  it,  for  preservation  in  the  per- 
manent records  of  their  people. 

The  mysterious  objects  known  as  Teraphim,  which  are 
occasionally  mentioned  in  Judges,  Samuel,  and  elsewhere, 
however,  can  hardly  be  interpreted  otherwise  than  as  indica- 
tions of  the  existence  both  of  ancestor- worship  and  of  image 
worship  in  old  Israel.  The  teraphim  were  certainly  images 
of  family  gods,  and,  as  such,  in  all  probability  represented 
deceased  ancestors.  Laban  indignantly  demands  of  his  son- 
in-law,  "Wherefore  hast  thou  stolen  my  Elohim?"  which 
Rachel,  who  must  be  assumed  to  have  worshiped  Jacob's 
God,  Jahveh,  had  carried  off,  obviously  because  she,  like  her 

*  It  is  further  well  worth  consideration  whether  indications  of:  former 
ancestor-worship  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  singular  weight  attached  to 
the  veneration  of  parents  in  the  fourth  commandment.  It  is  the  only 
positive  commandment,  in  addition  to  those  respecting  the  Deity  and 
that  concerning  the  Sabbath,  and  the  penalties  for  infringing  it  were  of 
the  same  character.  In  China,  a  corresponding  reverence  for  parents  is 
part  and  parcel  of  ancestor-worship  ;  so  in  ancient  Rome  and  in  Greece 
(where  parents  were  even  called  Beirepoi  koI  eiriycoi  6eol).  The  fifth 
commandment,  as  it  stands,  would  be  an  excellent  compromise  between 
ancestor- worship  and  monotheism.  The  larger  hereditary  share  allotted 
by  Israelitic  law  to  the  eldest  son  reminds  one  of  the  privileges  attached 
to  primogeniture  in  ancient  Rome,  which  were  closely  connected  with 
ancestor-worship.  There  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  in  favor  of  the  spec- 
ulation that  the  ark  of  the  covenant  may  have  been  a  relic  of  ancestor- 
worship  ;  but  that  topic  is  too  large  to  be  dealt  with  incidentally  in  this 
place. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  117 

father,  believed  in  their  divinity.  It  is  not  suggested  that 
Jacob  was  in  any  way  scandalized  by  the  idolatrous  practices 
of  his  favorite  wife,  whatever  he  may  have  thought  of  her 
honesty  when  the  truth  came  to  light ;  for  the  teraphim 
seem  to  have  remained  in  his  camp,  at  least  until  he  "  hid  " 
his  strange  gods  "  under  the  oak  that  was  by  Shechem  " 
(Gen.  xxxv.  4).  And  indeed  it  is  open  to  question  if  he  got 
rid  of  them  then,  for  the  subsequent  history  of  Israel  renders 
it  more  than  doubtful  whether  the  teraphim  were  regarded 
as  "  strange  gods  "  even  as  late  as  the  eighth  century,  b.  c. 

The  writer  of  the  books  of  Samuel  takes  it  quite  as  a 
matter  of  course  that  Michal,  daughter  of  one  royal  Jahveh 
worshiper  and  wife  of  the  servant  of  Jahveh  par  excellence, 
the  pious  David,  should  have  her  teraphim  handy,  in  her  and 
David's  chamber,  when  she  dresses  them  up  in  their  bed, 
into  a  simulation  of  her  husband,  for  the  purpose  of  deceiv- 
ing her  father's  messengers.  Even  one  of  the  early  prophets, 
Hosea,  when  he  threatens  that  the  children  of  Israel  shall 
abide  many  days  without  "  ephod  or  teraphim "  (iii.  4), 
appears  to  regard  both  as  equally  proper  appurtenances  of 
the  suspended  worship  of  Jahveh,  and  equally  certain  to 
be  restored  when  that  is  resumed.  When  we  further  take 
into  consideration  that  only  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah  was 
the  brazen  serpent,  preserved  in  the  temple  and  believed  to 
be  the  work  of  Moses,  destroyed,  and  the  practice  of  offering 
incense  to  it,  that  is,  worshiping  it,  abolished — that  Jero- 
boam could  set  up  "  calves  of  gold  "  for  Israel  to  worship, 
with  apparently  none  but  a  political  object,  and  certainly  with 
no  notion  of  creating  a  schism  among  the  worshipers  of  Jah- 
veh, or  of  repelling  the  men  of  Judah  from  his  standard — it 
seems  obvious,  either  that  the  Israelites  of  the  tenth  and  elev- 
enth centuries  B.  c.  knew  not  the  second  commandment,  or 
that  they  construed  it  merely  as  part  of  the  prohibition  to  wor- 
ship any  supreme  God  other  than  Jahveh,  which  precedes  it. 
In  seeking  for  information  about  the  teraphim,  I  lighted 
upon  the  following  passage  in  the  valuable  article  on  that 


118  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

subject  by  Archdeacon  Farrar,  in  Kitto's  Cyclopaedia  of  Bib- 
lical Literature,  which  is  so  much  to  the  purpose  of  my 
argument,  that  I  venture  to  quote  it  in  full : — 

The  main  and  certain  results  of  this  interview  are  that  the 
teraphim  were  rude  human  images ;  that  the  use  of  them  was 
an  antique  Aramaic  custom;  that  there  is  reason  to  suppose 
them  to  have  been  images  of  deceased  ancestors ;  that  they  were 
consulted  oracularly;  that  they  were  not  confined  to  Jews; 
that  their  use  continued  down  to  the  latest  period  of  Jewish  his- 
tory ;  and  lastly,  that  although  the  enlightened  prophets  and 
strictest  later  kings  regarded  them  as  idolatrous,  the  priests 
were  much  less  averse  to  such  images,  and  their  cult  was  not 
considered  in  any  way  repugnant  to  the  pious  worship  of 
Elohim,  nay,  even  to  the  worship  of  him  "  under  the  awful 
title  of  Jehovah."  In  fact,  they  involved  a  monotheistic 
idolatry  very  different  indeed  from  polytheism  ;  and  the  toler- 
ance of  them  by  priests,  as  compared  with  the  denunciation  of 
them  by  the  prophets,  offers  a  close  analogy  to  the  views  of  the 
Roman  Catholics  respecting  pictures  and  images  as  compared 
with  the  views  of  Protestants.  It  was  against  this  use  of 
idolatrous  symbols  and  emblems  in  a  monotheistic  worship  that 
the  second  commandment  was  directed,  whereas  the  first  is 
aimed  against  the  graver  sin  of  direct  polytheism.  But  the 
whole  history  of  Israel  shows  how  utterly  and  how  early  the 
law  must  have  fallen  into  desuetude.  The  worship  of  the 
golden  calf  and  of  the  calves  at  Dan  and  Bethel,  against  which, 
so  far  as  we  know,  neither  Elijah  nor  Elisha  said  a  single  word ; 
the  tolerance  of  high  places,  teraphim  and  betylia ;  the  offering 
of  incense  for  centuries  to  the  brazen  serpent  destroyed  by 
Hezekiah;  the  occasional  glimpses  of  the  most  startling  irregu- 
larities sanctioned  apparently  even  in  the  temple  worship  itself, 
prove  most  decisively  that  a  pure  monotheism  and  an  inde- 
pendence of  symbols  was  the  result  of  a  slow  and  painful  course 
of  God's  disciplinal  dealings  among  the  noblest  thinkers  of  a 
single  nation,  and  not,  as  is  so  constantly  and  erroneously 
urged,  the  instinct  of  the  whole  Semitic  race ;  in  other  words, 
one  single  branch  of  the  Semites  was  under  God's  providence 
educated  into  pure  monotheism  only  by  centuries  of  misfortune 
and  series  of  inspired  men  (vol.  iii.  p.  986). 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        H9 

It  appears  to  me  that  the  researches  of  the  anthropolo- 
gist lead  him  to  conclusions  identical  in  substance,  if  not 
in  terms  with  those  here  enunciated  as  the  result  of  a  care- 
ful study  of  the  same  subject  from  a  totally  dilferent  point 
of  view. 

There  is  abundant  evidence  in  the  books  of  Samuel  and 
elsewhere  that  an  article  of  dress  termed  an  ephod  was  sup- 
posed to  have  a  peculiar  efficacy  in  enabling  the  wearer  to  ex- 
ercise divination  by  means  of  Jahveh-Elohim.  Great  and 
long-continued  have  been  the  disputes  as  to  the  exact  nature 
of  the  ephod — whether  it  always  means  something  to  wear,  or 
whether  it  sometimes  means  an  image.  But  the  probabilities 
are  that  it  usually  signifies  a  kind  of  waistcoat  or  broad  zone, 
with  shoulder-straps,  which  the  person  who  "  inquired  of 
Jahveh  "  put  on.  In  1  Samuel,  xxiii.  2,  David  appears  to 
have  inquired  without  an  ephod,  for  Abiathar  the  priest  is 
said  to  have  "  come  down  with  an  ephod  in  his  hand  "  only 
subsequently.  And  then  David  asks  for  it  before  inquiring 
of  Jahveh  whether  the  men  of  Keilah  would  betray  him  or 
not.  David's  action  is  obviously  divination  pure  and  simple ; 
and  it  is  curious  that  he  seems  to  have  worn  the  ephod  him- 
self and  not  to  have  employed  Abiathar  as  a  medium.  How 
the  answer  was  given  is  not  clear,  though  the  probability  is 
that  it  was  obtained  by  casting  lots.  The  TJrim  and  Thum- 
mim  seem  to  have  been  two  such  lots  of  a  peculiarly  sacred 
character,  which  were  carried  in  the  pocket  of  the  high 
priest's  "  breast-plate."  This  last  was  worn  along  with  the 
ephod. 

With  the  exception  of  one  passage  (1  Sam.  xiv.  18)  the 
ark  is  ignored  in  the  history  of  Saul.  But  in  this  place  the 
Septuagint  reads  "  ephod  "  for  ark  while  in  1  Chronicles  xiii. 
3,  David  says  that  "  we  sought  not  unto  it  [the  ark]  in  the 
days  of  Saul."  Nor  does  Samuel  seem  to  have  paid  any  re- 
gard to  the  ark  after  its  return  from  Philistia ;  though,  in  his 
childhood,  he  is  said  to  have  slept  in  "  the  temple  of  Jahveh, 
where  the  ark  of  Elohim  was  "  (1  Sam.  iii.  3),  at  Shiloh,  and 


120  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

there  to  have  been  the  seer  of  the  earliest  apparitions  vouch- 
safed to  him  by  Jahveh.  The  space  between  the  cherubim 
or  winged  images  on  the  canopy  or  cover  (Kapporeth)  of  this 
holy  chest  was  held  to  be  the  special  seat  of  Jahveh — the 
place  selected  for  a  temporary  residence  of  the  Supreme  Elo- 
him who  had,  after  Aaron  and  Phineas,  Eli  and  his  sons  for 
priests  and  seers.  And,  when  the  ark  was  carried  to  the 
camp  at  Eben-ezer,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Israelites, 
no  less  than  the  Philistines,  held  that  "  Elohim  is  come  into 
the  camp  "  (iv.  7),  and  that  the  one,  as  much  as  the  other, 
conceived  that  the  Israelites  had  summoned  to  their  aid  a 
powerful  ally  in  "  these  (or  this)  mighty  Elohim  "—elsewhere 
called  Jahve-Sabaoth,  the  Jahveh  of  Hosts.  If  the  "  temple  " 
at  Shiloh  was  the  Pentateuchal  tabernacle,  as  is  suggested  by 
the  name  of  "  tent  of  meeting  "  given  to  it  in  1  Samuel  ii.  22, 
it  was  essentially  a  large  tent,  though  constituted  of  very  ex- 
pensive and  ornate  materials ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  a 
different  edifice,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  "  house  of 
Jahveh  "  was  built  on  the  model  of  an  ordinary  house  of  the 
time.  But  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that,  during 
the  reign  of  Saul,  any  greater  importance  attached  to  this 
seat  of  the  cult  of  Jahveh  than  to  others.  Sanctuaries,  and 
"  high  places  "  for  sacrifice,  were  scattered  all  over  the  coun- 
try from  Dan  to  Beersheba.  And,  as  Samuel  is  said  to  have 
gone  up  to  one  of  these  high  places  to  bless  the  sacrifice,  it 
may  be  taken  for  tolerably  certain  that  he  knew  nothing  of 
the  Levitical  laws  which  severely  condemn  the  high  places 
and  those  who  sacrifice  away  from  the  sanctuary  hallowed  by 
the  presence  of  the  ark. 

There  is  no  evidence  that,  during  the  time  of  the  Judges 
and  of  Samuel,  any  one  occupied  the  position  of  the  high 
priest  of  later  days.  And  persons  who  were  neither  priests 
nor  Levites  sacrificed  and  divined  or  "  inquired  of  Jahveh," 
when  they  pleased  and  where  they  pleased,  without  the  least 
indication  that  they,  or  any  one  else  in  Israel  at  that  time, 
knew  they  were  doing  wrong.     There  is  no  allusion  to  any 


THE  EVOLUTION  OP  THEOLOGY.  121 

special  observance  of  the  Sabbath ;  and  the  references  to  cir- 
cumcision are  indirect. 

Such  are  the  chief  articles  of  the  theological  creed  of  the 
old  Israelites,  which  are  made  known  to  us  by  the  direct 
evidence  of  the  ancient  record  to  which  we  have  had  recourse, 
and  they  are  as  remarkable  for  that  which  they  contain  as 
for  that  which  is  absent  from  them.  They  reveal  a  firm  con- 
viction that,  when  death  takes  place,  a  something  termed  a 
soul  or  spirit  leaves  the  body  and  continues  to  exist  in  Sheol 
for  a  period  of  indefinite  duration,  even  though  there  is  no 
proof  of  any  belief  in  absolute  immortality ;  that  such  spirits 
can  return  to  earth  to  possess  and  inspire  the  living ;  that 
they  are,  in  appearance  and  in  disposition,  likenesses  of  the 
men  to  whom  they  belonged,  but  that,  as  spirits,  they  have 
larger  powers  and  are  freer  from  physical  limitations ;  that 
they  thus  form  a  group  among  a  number  of  kinds  of  spiritual 
existences  known  as  Elohim,  of  whom  Jahveh,  the  national 
God  of  Israel,  is  one ;  that,  consistently  with  this  view,  Jah- 
veh was  conceived  as  a  sort  of  spirit,  human  in  aspect  and  in 
senses,  and  with  many  human  passions,  but  with  immensely 
greater  intelligence  and  power  than  any  other  Elohim,  whether 
human  or  divine.  Further,  the  evidence  proves  that  this 
belief  was  the  basis  of  the  Jahveh- worship  to  which  Samuel 
and  his  followers  were  devoted ;  that  there  is  strong  reason 
for  believing,  and  none  for  doubting,  that  idolatory,  in  the 
shape  of  the  worship  of  the  family  gods  or  teraphim,  was 
practiced  by  sincere  and  devout  Jahveh-worshipers ;  that  the 
ark,  with  its  protective  tent  or  tabernacle,  was  regarded  as 
a  specially,  but  by  no  means  exclusively,  favored  sanctuary 
of  Jahveh ;  that  the  ephod  appears  to  have  had  a  particular 
value  for  those  who  desired  to  divine  by  the  help  of  Jahveh ; 
and  that  divination  by  lots  was  practiced  before  Jahveh.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  of  any  be- 
lief in  retribution  after  death,  but  the  contrary;  ritual 
obligations  have  at  least  as  strong  sanction  as  moral ;  there 


122  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

are  clear  indications  that  some  of  the  most  stringent  of  the 
Levitical  laws  were  unknown  even  to  Samuel ;  priests  often 
appear  to  be  superseded  by  laymen,  even  in  the  performance 
of  sacrifices  and  divination ;  and  no  line  of  demarkation  can 
be  drawn  between  necromancer,  wizard,  seer,  prophet,  and 
priest,  each  of  whom  is  regarded,  like  all  the  rest,  as  a  medium 
of  communication  between  the  world  of  Elohim  and  that  of 
living  men. 

The  theological  system  thus  defined  offers  to  the  anthro- 
pologist no  feature  which  is  devoid  of  a  parallel  in  the  known 
theologies  of  other  races  of  mankind,  even  of  those  who  in- 
habit parts  of  the  world  most  remote  from  Palestine.  And 
the  foundation  of  the  whole,  the  ghost  story,  is  exactly  that 
theological  speculation  which  is  the  most  widely  spread  of 
all,  and  the  most  deeply  rooted  among  uncivilized  men.  I 
am  able  to  base  this  statement,  to  some  extent,  on  facts  within 
my  own  knowledge.  In  December,  1848,  H.  M.  S.  Rattle- 
snalce,  the  ship  to  which  I  then  belonged,  was  anchored  off 
Mount  Ernest,  an  island  in  Torres  Straits.  The  people  were 
few  and  well  disposed ;  and,  when  a  friend  of  mine  (whom  I 
will  call  B.)  and  I  went  ashore,  we  made  acquaintance  with 
an  old  native,  Paouda  by  name.  In  course  of  time  we  be- 
came quite  intimate  with  the  old  gentleman,  partly  by  the 
rendering  of  mutual  good  offices,  but  chiefly  because  Paouda 
believed  he  had  discovered  that  B.  was  his  father-in-law. 
And  his  grounds  for  this  singular  conviction  were  very  re- 
markable. We  had  made  a  long  stay  at  Cape  York  hard 
by ;  and,  in  accordance  with  a  theory  which  is  widely  spread 
among  the  Australians,  that  white  men  are  the  reincarnated 
spirits  of  black  men,  B.  was  held  to  be  the  ghost,  or  narki, 
of  a  certain  Mount  Ernest  native,  one  Antarki,  who  had 
lately  died,  on  the  ground  of  some  real  or  fancied  resemblance 
to  the  latter.  Now  Paouda  had  taken  to  wife  a  daughter  of 
Antarki's,  named  Domani,  and  as  soon  as  B.  informed  him 
that  he  was  the  ghost  of  Antarki,  Paouda  at  once  admitted 


THE  EVOLUTION   OF  THEOLOGY.  123 

the  relationship  and  acted  upon  it.  For,  as  all  the  women 
on  the  island  had  hidden  away  in  fear  of  the  ship,  and  we 
were  anxious  to  see  what  they  were  like,  B.  pleaded  pathet- 
ically with  Paouda  that  it  would  be  very  unkind  not  to  let 
him  see  his  daughter  and  grandchildren.  After  a  good  deal 
of  hesitation  and  the  exaction  of  pledges  of  deep  secrecy, 
Paouda  consented  to  take  B.,  and  myself  as  B.'s  friend,  to  see 
Domani  and  the  three  daughters,  by  whom  B.  was  received 
quite  as  one  of  the  family,  while  I  was  courteously  welcomed 
on  his  account. 

This  scene  made  an  impression  upon  me  which  is  not  yet 
effaced.  It  left  no  question  on  my  mind  of  the  sincerity  of 
the  strange  ghost  theory  of  these  savages,  and  of  the  influence 
which  their  belief  has  on  their  practical  life.  I  had  it  in  my 
mind,  as  well  as  many  a  like  result  of  subsequent  anthropo- 
logical studies,  when,  in  1869,*  I  wrote  as  follows  : — 

There  are  savages  without  God  in  any  proper  sense  of  the 
word,  but  none  without  ghosts.  And  the  Fetichism,  Ancestor- 
worship,  Hero-worship,  and  Demonology  of  primitive  savages 
are  all,  I  believe,  different  manners  of  expression  of  their  belief 
in  ghosts,  and  of  the  anthropomorphic  interpretation  of  out-of- 
the-way  events  which  is  its  concomitant.  Witchcraft  and  sor- 
cery are  the  practical  expressions  of  these  beliefs ;  and  they 
stand  in  the  same  relation  to  religious  worship  as  the  simple 
anthropomorphism  of  children  or  savages  does  to  theology. 

I  do  not  quote  myself  with  any  intention  of  making  a 
claim  to  originality  in  putting  forth  this  view ;  for  I  have 
since  discovered  that  the  same  conception  is  virtually  con- 
tained in  the  great  Discours  sur  VHistoire  U?iiverseUe  of 
Bossuet,  now  more  than  two  centuries  old  : — 

Le  culte  des  hommes  morts  faisoit  presque  tout  le  fond  de 
l'idolatrie  :  presque  tous  les  hommes  sacrifioient  aux  manes, 
c'est-a-dire  aux  ames  des  morts.     De  si  anciennes  erreurs  nous 

*  "  The  Scientific  Aspects  of  Positivism,"  Fortnightly  Review,  1869, 
republished  in  Lay  Sermons. 


124  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

font  voir  a  la  verite  combien  etoit  ancienne  la  croyance  de  l'im- 
mortalite  de  l'ame,  et  nous  montrent  qu'elle  doit  etre  rangee 
parmi  les  premieres  traditions  du  genre  humain.  Mais  l'homme, 
qui  gatoit  tout,  en  avoit  etrangement  abuse,  puisqu'elle  le  por- 
toit  a  sacrifier  aux  morts.  On  alloit  meme  jusqu'a  cet  exces,  de 
leur  sacrifier  des  hommes  vivans  :  on  tuoit  leurs  esclaves,  et 
meme  leurs  femmes,  pour  les  aller  servir  dans  l'autre  monde.* 

Among  more  modern  writers  J.  Gr.  Muller,  in  his  excellent 
Geschichte  der  amerikanischen  Urreligionen  (1855)  clearly 
recognizes  "  gespensterhafter  Geisterglaube  "  as  the  founda- 
tion of  all  savage  and  semicivilized  theology,  and  I  need  do 
no  more  than  mention  the  important  developments  of  the 
same  view  which  are  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Tylor's  Primitive 
Culture,  and  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  espe- 
cially his  recently-published  Ecclesiastical  Institutions.] 

It  is  a  matter  of  fact  that,  whether  we  direct  our  atten- 
tion to  the  older  conditions  of  civilized  societies,  in  Japan,  in 
China,  in  Hindostan,  in  Greece,  or  in  Rome,J;  we  find  under- 
lying all  other  theological  notions  the  belief  in  ghosts,  with 
its  inevitable  concomitant  sorcery;  and  a  primitive  cult  in 
the  shape  of  a  worship  of  ancestors,  which  is  essentially  an 
attempt  to  please,  or  appease,  their  ghosts.  The  same  thing 
is  true  of  old  Mexico  and  Peru,  and  of  every  semicivilized  or 
savage  people  who  have  developed  a  definite  cult;  and  in 
those  who,  like  the  natives  of  Australia,  have  not  even  a  cult, 
the  belief  in,  and  fear  of,  ghosts  is  as  strong  as  anywhere 
else.  The  most  clearly  demonstrable  article  of  the  theology 
of  the  Israelites  in  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  b.  c.  is 

*  CEuvres  de  Bossuet,  ed.  1808,  t.  xxxv.  p.  282. 

f  I  should  like  further  to  add  the  expression  of  my  indebtedness  to 
two  works  by  Herr  Julius  Lippert,  Der  Seelencult  in  seinen  Beziehun- 
gen  zur  alt-hebraischen  Religion,  and  Die  Religionen  der  europaisclien 
Culturvolker,  both  published  in  1881.  I  have  found  them  full  of  valu- 
able suggestions. 

%  See  among  others  the  remarkable  work  of  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  La 
cite  antique,  in  which  the  social  importance  of  the  old  Roman  ancestor--, 
worship  is  brought  out  with  great  clearness. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        125 

therefore  simply  the  article  which  is  to  be  found  in  all  primi- 
tive theologies,  namely,  the  belief  that  a  man  has  a  soul 
which  continues  to  exist  after  death  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
time,  and  may  return,  as  a  ghost,  with  a  divine,  or  at  least 
demonic,  character,  to  influence  for  good  or  evil  (and  usually 
for  evil)  the  affairs  of  the  living.  But  the  correspondence 
between  the  old  Israelitic  and  other  archaic  forms  of  theology 
extends  to  details.  If,  in  order  to  avoid  all  chance  of  direct 
communication,  we  direct  our  attention  to  the  theology  of 
semicivilized  people,  such  as  the  Polynesian  Islanders,  sepa- 
rated by  the  greatest  possible  distance,  and  by  every  conceiv- 
able barrier,  from  the  inhabitants  of  Palestine,  we  shall  find 
not  merely  that  all  the  features  of  old-Israelitic  theology, 
which  are  revealed  in  the  records  cited,  are  found  among 
them ;  but  that  extant  information  as  to  the  inner  mind  of 
these  people  tends  to  remove  many  of  the  difficulties  which 
those  who  have  not  studied  anthropology  find  in  the  Hebrew 
narrative. 

One  of  the  best  sources,  if  not  the  best  source,  of  informa- 
tion on  these  topics  is  Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  which  tells 
us  of  the  condition  of  Cook's  "  Friendly  Islanders "  eighty 
years  ago,  before  European  influence  was  sensibly  felt  among 
them.  Mariner,  a  youth  of  fair  education  and  of  no  incon- 
siderable natural  ability  (as  the  work  which  was  drawn  up 
from  the  materials  he  furnished  shows),  was  about  fifteen 
years  of  age  when  his  ship  was  attacked  and  plundered  by 
the  Tongans  :  he  remained  four  years  in  the  islands,  familiar- 
ized himself  with  the  language,  lived  the  life  of  the  people, 
became  intimate  with  many  of  them,  and  had  every  oppor- 
tunity of  acquainting  himself  with  their  opinions,  as  well  as 
with  their  habits  and  customs.  He  seems  to  have  been  de- 
void of  prejudices,  theological  or  other,  and  the  impression 
of  strict  accuracy  which  his  statements  convey  has  been  justi- 
fied by  all  the  knowledge  of  Polynesian  life  which  has  been 
subsequently  acquired. 

It  is  desirable,  therefore,  to  pay  close  attention  to  that 


126  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

which  Mariner  tells  us  about  the  theological  views  of  these 
people : — 

The  human  soul,*  after  its  separation  from  the  body,  is 
termed  a  hotooa  (a  god  or  spirit),  and  is  believed  to  exist  in  the 
shape  of  the  body ;  to  have  the  same  propensities  as  during  life, 
but  to  be  corrected  by  a  more  enlightened  understanding,  by 
which  it  readily  distinguishes  good  from  evil,  truth  from  false- 
hood, right  from  wrong;  having  the  same  attributes  as  the 
original  gods,  but  in  a  minor  degree,  and  having  its  dwelling 
forever  in  the  happy  regions  of  Bolotoo,  holding  the  same  rank 
in  regard  to  other  souls  as  during  this  life ;  it  has,  however,  the 
power  of  returning  to  Tonga  to  inspire  priests,  relations,  or 
others,  or  to  appear  in  dreams  to  those  it  wishes  to  admonish ; 
and  sometimes  to  the  external  eye  in  the  form  of  a  ghost  or 
apparition ;  but  this  power  of  reappearance  at  Tonga  particularly 
belongs  to  the  souls  of  chiefs  rather  than  of  matabooles  (vol.  ii. 
p.  130). 

The  word  "  hotooa  "  is  the  same  as  that  which  is  usually 
spelt  "  atua  "  by  Polynesian  philologues,  and  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  adopt  this  spelling.  Now  under  this  head  of 
"Atuas  or  supernatural  intelligent  beings"  the  Tongans 
include : — 

1.  The  original  gods.  2.  The  souls  of  nobles  that  have  all 
attributes  in  common  with  the  first  but  inferior  in  degree.  3. 
The  souls  of  matabooles  t  that  are  still  inferior,  and  have  not 
the  power  as  the  two  first  have  of  coming  back  to  Tonga  to 
inspire  the  priests,  though  they  are  supposed  to  have  the  power 
of  appearing  to  their  relatives.  4.  The  original  attendants  or 
servants,  as  it  were,  of  the  gods,  who,  although  they  had  their 
origin  and  have  ever  since  existed  in  Bolotoo,  are  still  inferior 
to  the  third  class.     5.  The  Atua  pow  or  mischievous  gods. 


*  Supposed  to  be  "  the  finer  or  more  aeriform  part  of  the  body," 
standing  in  "  the  same  relation  to  the  body  as  the  perfume  and  the 
more  essential  qualities  of  a  flower  do  to  the  more  solid  substances " 
(Mariner,  vol.  ii.  p.  127). 

f  A  kind  of  "  clients  "  in  the  Roman  sense. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.       127 

6.  Mooi,  or  the  god  that  supports  the  earth  and  docs  not  "belong 
to  Bolotoo  (vol.  ii.  pp.  103,  104). 

From  this  it  appears  that  the  "  Atuas"  of  the  Polynesian 
are  exactly  equivalent  to  the  "  Elohim  "  of  the  old  Israelite.* 
They  comprise  everything  spiritual,  from  a  ghost  to  a  god, 
and  from  "  the  merely  tutelar  gods  to  particular  private  fami- 
lies "  (vol.  ii.  p.  104)  to  Ta-li-y-Tooboo,  who  was  the  national 
god  of  Tonga.  The  Tongans  had  no  doubt  that  these  Atuas 
daily  and  hourly  influenced  their  destinies  and  could,  con- 
versely, be  influenced  by  them.  Hence  their  "  piety,"  the  in- 
cessant acts  of  sacrificial  worship  which  occupied  their  lives, 
and  their  belief  in  omens  and  charms.  Moreover,  the  Atuas 
were  believed  to  visit  particular  persons, — their  own  priests 
in  the  case  of  the  higher  gods,  but  apparently  anybody  in 
that  of  the  lower, — and  to  inspire  them  by  a  process  which 
was  conceived  to  involve  the  actual  residence  of  the  god,  for 
the  time  being,  in  the  person  inspired,  who  was  thus  rendered 
capable  of  prophesying  (vol.  ii.  p.  100).  For  the  Tongan, 
therefore,  inspiration  indubitably  was  possession. 

When  one  of  the  higher  gods  was  invoked,  through  his 
priest,  by  a  chief  who  wished  to  consult  the  oracle,  or,  in  old 
Israelitic  phraseology,  to  "  inquire  of,"  the  god,  a  hog  was 
killed  and  cooked  over  night,  and  together  with  plantains, 
yams,  and  the  material  for  making  the  peculiar  drink  hava 
(of  which  the  Tongans  were  very  fond)  was  carried  next  day 
to  the  priest.  A  circle,  as  for  an  ordinary  kava-drinking  enter- 
tainment, was  then  formed ;  but  the  priest,  as  the  representa- 
tive of  the  god,  took  the  highest  place,  while  the  chiefs  sat 
outside  the  circle,  as  an  expression  of  humility  calculated  to 
please  the  god. 

As  soon  as  they  are  all  seated  the  priest  is  considered  as 
inspired,  the  god  being  supposed  to  exist  within  him  from  that 

*  It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  daifiwv  among  the  Greeks,  and  Deus 
among  the  Romans,  had  the  same  wide  signification.  The  dii  manes 
were  ghosts  of  ancestors = Atuas  of  the  family. 


128  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

moment.  He  remains  for  a  considerable  time  in  silence  with 
his  hands  clasped  before  him,  his  eyes  are  cast  down  and  he 
rests  perfectly  still.  During  the  time  the  victuals  are  being 
shared  out  and  the  kava  preparing,  the  matabooles  sometimes 
begin  to  consult  him ;  sometimes  he  answers,  and  at  other  times 
not;  in  either  case  he  remains  with  his  eyes  cast  down.  Fre- 
quently he  will  not  utter  a  word  till  the  repast  is  finished  and 
the  kava  too.  When  he  speaks  he  generally  begins  in  a  low 
and  very  altered  tone  of  voice,  which  gradually  rises  to  nearly 
its  natural  pitch,  though  sometimes  a  little  above  it.  All  that  he 
says  is  supposed  to  be  the  declaration  of  the  god,  and  he  accord- 
ingly speaks  in  the  first  person,  as  if  he  were  the  god.  All  this 
is  done  generally  without  any  apparent  inward  emotion  or  out- 
ward agitation ;  but,  on  some  occasions,  his  countenance  becomes 
fierce,  and  as  it  were  inflamed,  and  his  whole  frame  agitated 
with  inward  feeling ;  he  is  seized  with  an  universal  trembling, 
the  perspiration  breaks  out  on  his  forehead,  and  his  lips  turning 
black  are  convulsed ;  at  length  tears  start  in  floods  from  his 
eyes,  his  breast  heaves  with  great  emotion,  and  his  utterance  is 
choked.  These  symptoms  gradually  subside.  Before  this  par- 
oxysm comes  on,  and  after  it  is  over,  he  often  eats  as  much  as 
four  hungry  men  under  other  circumstances  could  devour.  The 
fit  being  now  gone  off,  he  remains  for  some  time  calm  and  then 
takes  up  a  club  that  is  placed  by  him  for  the  purpose,  turns  it 
over  and  regards  it  attentively ;  he  then  looks  up  earnestly,  now 
to  the  right,  now  to  the  left,  and  now  again  at  the  club ;  after- 
ward he  looks  up  again  and  about  him  in  like  manner,  and 
then  again  fixes  his  eyes  on  the  club,  and  so  on  for  several  times. 
At  length  he  suddenly  raises  the  club,  and,  after  a  moment's 
pause,  strikes  the  ground  or  the  adjacent  part  of  the  house  with 
considerable  force;  immediately  the  god  leaves  him,  and  he 
rises  up  and  retires  to  the  back  of  the  ring  among  the  people 
(vol.  i.  pp.  100,  101). 

The  phenomena  thus  described,  in  language  which,  to  any 
one  who  is  familiar  with  the  manifestations  of  abnormal  men- 
tal states  among  ourselves,  bears  the  stamp  of  fidelity,  furnish 
a  most  instructive  commentary  upon  the  story  of  the  wise 
woman  of  Endor.  As  in  the  latter,  we  have  the  possession 
by  the  spirit  or  soul  (Atua,  Elohim),  the  strange  voice,  the 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        129 

speaking  in  the  first  person.  Unfortunately  nothing  (be- 
yond the  loud  cry)  is  mentioned  as  to  the  state  of  the  wise 
woman  of  Endor.  But  what  we  learn  from  other  sources 
(e.  g.  1  Sam.  x.  20-24)  respecting  the  physical  concomitants 
of  inspiration  among  the  old  Israelites  has  its  exact  equiva- 
lent in  this  and  other  accounts  of  Polynesian  prophetism. 
An  excellent  authority,  Moerenhout,  who  lived  among  the 
people  of  the  Society  Islands  many  years  and  knew  them 
well,  says  that,  in  Tahiti,  the  role  of  the  prophet  had  very 
generally  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  the  priests  into  that  of 
private  persons  who  professed  to  represent  the  god,  often  as- 
sumed his  name,  and  in  this  capacity  prophesied.  I  will  not 
run  the  risk  of  weakening  the  force  of  Moerenhout's  descrip- 
tion of  the  prophetic  state  by  translating  it : — 

Un  individu,  dans  cet  etat,  avait  le  bras  gauche  enveloppe 
d'un  morceau  d'etoffe,  signe  de  la  presence  de  la  Divinite.  II 
ne  parlait  que  d'un  ton  imperieux  et  vehement.  Ses  attaques, 
quand  il  allait  prophetiser,  etaient  aussi  effroyables  qu'impo- 
santes.  II  tremblait  d'abord  de  tous  ses  membres,  la  figure 
enilee,  les  yeux  hagards,  rouges  et  etincelants  d'une  expression 
sauvage.  II  gesticulait,  articulait  des  mots  vides  de  sens, 
poussait  des  cris  horribles  qui  faisaient  tressaillir  tous  les  assist- 
ans,  et  s'exaltait  parfois  au  point  qu'on  n'osait  pas  1'approcher. 
Autour  de  lui,  le  silence  de  la  terreur  et  du  respect.  .  .  .  C'est 
alors  qu'il  repondait  aux  questions,  annoncait  l'avenir,  le  destin 
des  batailles,  la  volonte  des  dieux ;  et,  chose  etonnante !  au  sein 
de  ce  delire,  de  cet  enthousiasme  religieux,  son  langage  etait 
grave,  imposant,  son  eloquence  noble  et  persuasive.* 

Just  so  Saul  strips  off  his  clothes,  "  prophesies  "  before  Sam- 
uel, and  lies  down  "  naked  all  that  day  and  night." 

Both  Mariner  and  Moerenhout  refuse  to  have  recourse  to 
the  hypothesis  of  imposture  in  order  to  account  for  the  in- 
spired state  of  the  Polynesian  prophets.  On  the  contrary, 
they  fully  believe  in  their  sincerity.     Mariner  tells  the  story 

*  Voyages  aux  iles  du  Grand  Ocean,  t.  i.  p.  482. 


130  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  a  young  chief,  an  acquaintance  of  his,  who  thought  him- 
self possessed  by  the  Atua  of  a  dead  woman  who  had  fallen 
in  love  with  him,  and  who  wished  him  to  die  that  he  might 
be  near  her  in  Bolotoo.  And  he  died  accordingly.  But  the 
most  valuable  evidence  on  this  head  is  contained  in  what  the 
same  authority  says  about  King  Finow's  son.  The  previous 
king,  Toogoo  Ahoo,  had  been  assassinated  by  Finow,  and  his 
soul,  become  an  Atua  of  divine  rank  in  Bolotoo,  had  been 
pleased  to  visit  and  inspire  Finow's  son — with  what  particu- 
lar object  does  not  appear. 

When  this  young  chief  returned  to  Hapai,  Mr.  Mariner, 
who  was  upon  a  footing  of  great  friendship  with  him,  one  day 
asked  him  how  he  felt  himself  when  the  spirit  of  Toogoo  Ahoo 
visited  him;  he  replied  that  he  could  not  well  describe  his  feel- 
ings, but  the  best  he  could  say  of  it  was,  that  he  felt  himself  all 
over  in  a  glow  of  heat  and  quite  restless  and  uncomfortable, 
and  did  not  feel  his  own  personal  identity,  as  it  were,  but 
seemed  to  have  a  mind  different  from  his  own  natural  mind, 
his  thoughts  wandering  upon  strange  and  unusual  subjects, 
although  perfectly  sensible  of  surrounding  objects.  He  next 
asked  him  how  he  knew  it  was  the  spirit  of  Toogoo  Ahoo  ?  His 
answer  was,  "  There's  a  fool !  How  can  I  tell  you  how  I  knew 
it  ?  I  felt  and  knew  it  was  so  by  a  kind  of  consciousness ;  my 
mind  told  me  that  it  was  Toogoo  Ahoo  "  (vol.  i.  pp.  104, 105). 

Finow's  son  was  evidently  made  for  a  theological  dispu- 
tant, and  fell  back  at  once  on  the  inexpugnable  stronghold 
of  faith  when  other  evidence  was  lacking.  "  There's  a  fool ! 
I  know  it  is  true,  because  I  know  it,"  is  the  exemplar  and 
epitome  of  the  skeptic-crushing  process  in  other  places  than 
the  Tonga  Islands. 

The  island  of  Bolotoo,  to  which  all  the  souls  (of  the  upper 
classes  at  any  rate)  repair  after  the  death  of  the  body,  and 
from  which  they  return  at  will  to  interfere,  for  good  or  evil, 
with  the  lives  of  those  whom  they  have  left  behind,  obviously 
answers  to  Sheol.  In  Tongan  tradition  this  place  of  souls  is 
a  sort  of  elysium  above  ground,  and  pleasant  enough  to  live 


THE  EVOLUTION  OP  THEOLOGY.       131 

in.  But  in  other  parts  of  Polynesia,  the  corresponding  local- 
ity, which  is  called  Po,  has  to  be  reached  by  descending  into 
the  earth,  and  is  represented  dark  and  gloomy  like  Sheol. 
But  it  was  not  looked  upon  as  a  place  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments in  any  sense.  Whether  in  Bolotoo  or  in  Po,  the  soul 
took  the  rank  it  had  in  the  flesh  ;  and,  a  shadow,  lived  among 
the  shadows  of  the  friends  and  houses  and  food  of  its  previ- 
ous life. 

The  Tongan  theologians  recognized  several  hundred  gods ; 
but  there  was  one,  already  mentioned  as  their  national  god, 
whom  they  regarded  as  far  greater  than  any  of  the  others, 
"  as  a  great  chief  from  the  top  of  the  sky  down  to  the  bottom 
of  the  earth  "  (Mariner,  vol.  ii.  p.  106).  He  was  also  god  of 
war,  and  the  tutelar  deity  of  the  royal  family,  whoever  hap- 
pened to  be  the  incumbent  of  the  royal  office  for  the  time 
being.  He  had  no  priest  except  the  king  himself,  and  his 
visits,  even  to  royalty,  were  few  and  far  between.  The  name 
of  this  supreme  deity  was  Ta-li-y-Tooboo,  the  literal  meaning 
of  which  is  said  to  be  "  Wait  there,  Tooboo,"  from  which  it 
would  appear  that  the  peculiar  characteristic  of  Ta-li-y-Too- 
boo,  in  the  eyes  of  his  worshipers,  was  persistence  of  dura- 
tion. And  it  is  curious  to  notice,  in  relation  to  this  circum- 
stance, that  many  Hebrew  philologers  have  thought  the 
meaning  of  Jahveh  to  be  best  expressed  by  the  word  "  Eter- 
nal." It  would  probably  be  difficult  to  express  the  notion  of 
an  eternal  being,  in  a  dialect  so  little  fitted  to  convey  abstract 
conceptions  as  Tongan,  better  than  by  that  of  one  who  al- 
ways "  waits  there." 

The  characteristics  of  the  gods  in  Tongan  theology  are 
exactly  those  of  men  whose  shape  they  are  supposed  to  pos- 
sess, only  they  have  more  intelligence  and  greater  power. 
The  Tongan  belief  that,  after  death,  the  human  Atua  more 
readily  distinguishes  good  from  evil,  runs  parallel  with  the 
old  Israelitic  conception  of  Elohim  expressed  in  Genesis,  "  Ye 
shall  be  as  Elohim,  knowing  good  from  evil."  They  further 
agreed  with  the  old  Israelites,  that  "  all  rewards  for  virtue 


132  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  punishments  for  vice  happen  to  men  in  this  world  only, 
and  come  immediately  from  the  gods"  (vol.  ii.  p.  100). 
Moreover,  they  were  of  opinion  that  though  the  gods  ap- 
prove of  some  kinds  of  virtue  and  are  displeased  with  some 
kinds  of  vice,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  protect  or  forsake 
their  worshipers  according  to  their  moral  conduct,  yet  neglect 
to  pay  due  respect  to  the  deities,  and  forgetfulness  to  keep 
them  in  good  humor,  might  be  visited  with  even  worse  con- 
sequences than  moral  delinquency.  And  those  who  will 
carefully  study  the  so-called  "  Mosaic  code  "  contained  in  the 
books  of  Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Numbers,  will  see  that, 
though  Jahveh's  prohibitions  of  certain  forms  of  immorality 
are  strict  and  sweeping,  his  wrath  is  quite  as  strongly  kindled 
against  infractions  of  ritual  ordinances.  Accidental  homi- 
cide may  go  unpunished,  and  reparation  may  be  made  for 
willful  theft.  On  the  other  hand,  JSTadab  and  Abihu,  who 
"  offered  strange  fire  before  Jahveh,  which  he  had  not  com- 
manded them,"  were  swiftly  devoured  by  Jahveh's  fire ;  he 
who  sacrificed  anywhere  except  at  the  allotted  place  was  to 
be  "  cut  off  from  his  people  " ;  so  was  he  who  eat  blood ;  and 
the  details  of  the  upholstery  of  the  Tabernacle,  of  the  milli- 
nery of  the  priests'  vestments,  and  of  the  cabinet  work  of  the 
ark,  can  plead  direct  authority  from  Jahveh,  no  less  than 
moral  commands. 

Among  the  Tongans,  the  sacrifices  were  regarded  as  gifts 
of  food  and  drink  offered  to  the  divine  Atuas,  just  as  the 
articles  deposited  by  the  graves  of  the  recently  dead  were 
meant  as  food  for  Atuas  of  lower  rank.  A  kava  root  was  a 
constant  form  of  offering  all  over  Polynesia.  In  the  excel- 
lent work  of  the  Rev.  George  Turner,  entitled  Nineteen  Years 
in  Polynesia  (p.  241),  I  find  it  said  of  the  Samoans  (near 
neighbors  of  the  Tongans) : — 

The  offerings  were  principally  cooked  food.  As  in  ancient 
Greece  so  in  Samoa,  the  first  cup  was  in  honor  of  the  god.  It 
was  either  poured  out  on  the  ground  or  waved  toward  the 
heavens,  reminding  us  again  of  the  Mosaic  ceremonies.    The 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        133 

chiefs  all  drank  a  portion  out  of  the  same  cup,  according  to 
rank  ;  and  after  that,  the  food  hrought  as  an  offering  was  di- 
vided and  eaten  "  there  before  the  Lord.11 

In  Tonga,  when  they  consulted  a  god  who  had  a  priest, 
the  latter,  as  representative  of  the  god,  had  the  first  cup ; 
but  if  the  god,  like  Ta-li-y  Tooboo,  had  no  priest,  then  the 
chief  place  was  left  vacant,  and  was  supposed  to  be  occupied 
by  the  god  himself.  When  the  first  cup  of  kava  was  filled, 
the  mataboole  who  acted  as  master  of  the  ceremonies  said, 
"  Give  it  to  your  god,"  and  it  was  offered,  though  only  as  a 
matter  of  form.  In  Tonga  and  Samoa  there  were  many 
sacred  places  or  morais,  with  houses  of  the  ordinary  con- 
struction, but  which  served  as  temples  in  consequence  of 
being  dedicated  to  various  gods ;  and  there  were  alters  on 
which  the  sacrifices  were  offered ;  nevertheless  there  were 
few  or  no  images.  Mariner  mentions  none  in  Tonga,  and 
the  Samoans  seem  to  have  been  regarded  as  no  better  than 
atheists  by  other  Polynesians  because  they  had  none.  It 
does  not  apear  that  either  of  these  peoples  had  images  even 
of  their  family  or  ancestral  gods. 

In  Tahiti  and  the  adjacent  islands,  Moerenhout  (t.  i.  p. 
471)  makes  the  very  interesting  observation,  not  only  that 
idols  were  often  absent,  but  that,  where  they  existed,  the 
images  of  the  gods  served  merely  as  depositories  for  the 
proper  representatives  of  the  divinity.  Each  of  these  was 
called  a  maro  aurou)  and  was  a  kind  of  girdle  artistically 
adorned  with  red,  yellow,  blue,  and  black  feathers — the  red 
feathers  being  especially  important — which  were  consecrated 
and  kept  as  sacred  objects  within  the  idols.  They  were  worn 
by  great  personages  on  solemn  occasions,  and  conferred  upon 
their  wearers  a  sacred  and  almost  divine  character.  There 
is  no  distinct  evidence  that  the  maro  aurou  was  supposed  to 
have  any  special  efficacy  in  divination,  but  one  can  not  fail 
to  see  a  certain  parallelism  between  this  holy  girdle,  which 
endowed  its  wearer  with  a  particular  sanctity,  and  the  ephod. 

According  to  the  Rev.  R.  Taylor,  the  New  Zealanders 


134  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

formerly  used  the  word  karahia  (now  employed  for  "  prayer  ") 
to  signify  a  "  spell,  charm,  or  incantation,"  and  the  utterance 
of  these  karakias  constituted  the  chief  part  of  their  cult.  In 
the  south,  the  officiating  priest  had  a  small  image,  "  about 
eighteen  inches  long,  resembling  a  peg  with  a  carved  head," 
which  reminds  one  of  the  form  commonly  attributed  to  the 
teraphim. 

The  priest  first  bandaged  a  fillet  of  red  parrot  feathers  under 
the  god's  chin,  which  was  called  his  pahau  or  beard  ;  this  band- 
age was  made  of  a  certain  kind  of  sennet,  which  was  tied  on  in 
a  peculiar  way.  When  this  was  done  it  was  taken  possession 
of  by  the  Atua,  whose  spirit  entered  it.  The  priest  then  either 
held  it  in  the  hand  and  vibrated  it  in  the  air,  while  the  power- 
ful karakia  was  repeated,  or  he  tied  a  piece  of  string  (formed  of 
the  center  of  a  flax  leaf)  round  the  neck  of  the  image  and  stuck 
it  in  the  ground.  He  sat  at  a  little  distance  from  it,  leaning 
against  a  tuahu,  a  short  stone  pillar  stuck  in  the  ground  in  a 
slanting  position,  and  holding  the  string  in  his  hand,  he  gave 
the  god  a  jerk  to  arrest  his  attention,  lest  he  should  be  other- 
wise engaged,  like  Baal  of  old,  either  hunting,  fishing,  or  sleep- 
ing, and  therefore  must  be  awaked.  .  .  .  The  god  is  supposed 
to  make  use  of  the  priest's  tongue  in  giving  a  reply.  Image- 
worship  appears  to  have  been  confined  to  one  part  of  the  island. 
The  Atua  was  supposed  only  to  enter  the  image  for  the  occa- 
sion. The  natives  declare  they  did  not  worship  the  image 
itself,  but  only  the  Atua  it  represented,  and  that  the  image  was 
merely  used  as  a  way  of  approaching  him.* 

This  is  the  excuse  for  image-worship  which  the  more  in- 
telligent idolaters  make  all  the  world  over ;  but  it  is  more 
interesting  to  observe  that,  in  the  present  case,  we  seem  to 
have  the  equivalents  of  divination  by  teraphim,  with  the  aid 
of  something  like  an  ephod  (which,  however,  is  used  to 
sanctify  the  image  and  not  the  priest)  mixed  up  together. 
Many  Hebrew  archaeologist  have  supposed  the  term  "  ephod  " 
is  sometimes  used  for  an  image  (particularly  in  the  case  of 


*  Te  Ika  a  Maui  :  New  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,  p.  72. 


TIIE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  135 

Gideon's  ephod),  and  the  story  of  Micah,  in  the  book  of 
Judges,  shows  that  images  were,  at  any  rate,  employed  in 
close  association  with  the  ephod.  If  the  pulling  of  the 
string  to  call  the  attention  of  the  god  seems  as  absurd  to  us 
as  it  appears  to  have  done  to  the  worthy  missionary,  who  tells 
us  of  the  practice,  it  should  be  recollected  that  the  high 
priest  of  Jahveh  was  ordered  to  wear  a  garment  fringed  with 
golden  bells. 

And  it  shall  be  upon  Aaron  to  minister;  and  the  sound 
thereof  shall  be  heard  when  he  goeth  in  unto  the  holy  place 
before  Jahveh,  and  when  he  cometh  out,  that  he  die  not 
(Exod.  xxviii.  35). 

An  escape  from  the  obvious  conclusion  suggested  by  this 
passage  has  been  sought  in  the  supposition  that  these  bells 
rang  for  the  sake  of  the  worshipers,  as  at  the  elevation  of 
the  host  in  the  Eoman  Catholic  ritual ;  but  then  why  should 
the  priest  be  threatened  with  the  well-known  penalty  for  in- 
advisedly beholding  the  divinity  ? 

In  truth,  the  intermediate  step  between  the  Maori 
practice  and  that  of  the  old  Israelites  is  furnished  by  the 
Kami  temples  in  Japan.  These  are  provided  with  bells 
which  the  worshipers  who  present  themselves  ring,  in  order 
to  call  the  attention  of  the  ancestor-god  to  their  presence. 
Grant  the  fundamental  assumption  of  the  essentially  human 
character  of  the  spirit,  whether  Atua,  Kami,  or  Elohim,  and 
all  these  practices  are  equally  rational. 

The  sacrifices  to  the  gods  in  Tonga,  and  elsewhere  in 
Polynesia,  were  ordinarily  social  gatherings,  in  which  the 
god,  either  in  his  own  person  or  in  that  of  his  priestly  repre- 
sentative, was  supposed  to  take  part.  These  sacrifices  were 
offered  on  every  occasion  of  importance,  and  even  the  daily 
meals  were  prefaced  by  oblations  and  libations  of  food  and 
drink,  exactly  answering  to  those  offered  by  the  old  Romans 
to  their  manes,  penates,  and  lares.  The  sacrifices  had  no 
moral  significance,  but   were  the   necessary  result  of  the 


136  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

theory  that  the  god  was  either  a  deified  ghost  of  an  ancestor 
or  chief,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  being  of  like  nature  to  these.  If 
one  wanted  to  get  anything  out  of  him,  therefore,  the  first 
step  was  to  put  him  in  good  humor  by  gifts ;  and  if  one 
desired  to  escape  his  wrath,  which  might  be  excited  -by  the 
most  trifling  neglect  or  unintentional  disrespect,  the  great 
thing  was  to  pacify  him  by  costly  presents.  King  Finow 
appears  to  have  been  somewhat  of  a  freethinker  (to  the  great 
horror  of  his  subjects),  and  it  was  only  his  untimely  death 
which  prevented  him  from  dealing  with  the  priest  of  a  god, 
who  had  not  returned  a  favorable  answer  to  his  supplica- 
tions, as  Saul  dealt  with  the  priests  of  the  sanctuary  of 
Jahveh  at  Nob.  Nevertheless,  Finow  showed  his  practical 
belief  in  the  gods  during  the  sickness  of  a  daughter,  to  whom 
he  was  fondly  attached,  in  a  fashion  which  has  a  close  parallel 
in  the  history  of  Israel. 

If  the  gods  have  any  resentment  against  us,  let  the  whole 
weight  of  vengeance  fall  on  my  head.  I  fear  not  their  venge- 
ance— but  spare  my  child ;  and  I  earnestly  entreat  you,  To  obo 
Totai  [the  god  whom  he  had  invoked],  to  exert  all  your  in- 
fluence with  the  other  gods  that  I  alone  may  suffer  all  the 
punishment  they  desire  to  inflict  (vol.  i.  p.  354). 

So  when  the  king  of  Israel  has  sinned  by  "numbering  the  peo- 
ple," and  they  are  punished  for  his  fault  by  a  pestilence  which 
slays  seventy  thousand  innocent  men,  David  cries  to  Jahveh : — 

Lo,  I  have  sinned,  and  I  have  done  perversely;  but  these 
sheep,  what  have  they  done?  let  thine  hand,  I  pray  thee,  be 
against  me,  and  against  my  father's  house  (2  Sam.  xxiv.  17). 

Human  sacrifices  were  extremely  common  in  Polynesia ; 
and,  in  Tonga,  the  "  devotion  "  of  a  child  by  strangling  was 
a  favorite  method  of  averting  the  wrath  of  the  gods.  The 
well-known  instances  of  Jephthah's  sacrifice  of  his  daughter 
and  of  David's  giving  up  the  seven  sons  of  Saul  to  be  sacrificed 
by  the  Gibeonites  "  before  Jahveh,"  appear  to  me  to  leave  no 
doubt  that  the  old  Israelites,  even  when  devout  worshipers 


THE  EVOLUTION  OP  THEOLOGY.  137 

of  Jaliveh,  considered  human  sacrifices,  under  certain 
circumstances,  to  be  not  only  permissible  but  laudable- 
Samuel's  hewing  to  pieces  of  the  miserable  captive,  sole 
survivor  of  his  nation,  Agag,  "  before  Jahveh,"  can  hardly  be 
viewed  in  any  other  light.  The  life  of  Moses  is  redeemed 
from  Jahveh,  who  "  sought  to  slay  him,"  by  Zipporah's 
symbolical  sacrifice  of  her  child,  by  the  bloody  operation  of 
circumcision.  Jahveh  expressly  affirms  that  the  first-born 
males  of  men  and  beasts  are  devoted  to  him ;  in  accordance 
with  that  claim,  the  first-born  males  of  the  beasts  are  duly 
sacrificed ;  and  it  is  only  by  special  permission  that  the  claim 
to  the  first-born  of  men  is  waived,  and  it  is  enacted  that  they 
may  be  redeemed  (Exod.  xiii.  12-15).  Is  it  possible  to  avoid 
the  conclusion  that  immolation  of  their  first-born  sons  would 
have  been  incumbent  on  the  worshipers  of  Jahveh,  had 
they  not  been  thus  specially  excused  ?  Can  any  other  con- 
clusion be  drawn  from  the  history  of  Abraham  and  Isaac  ? 
Does  Abraham  exhibit  any  indication  of  surprise  when  he 
receives  the  astounding  order  to  sacrifice  his  son?  Is  there 
the  slightest  evidence  that  there  was  anything  in  his  intimate 
and  personal  acquaintance  with  the  character  of  the  Deity, 
who  had  eaten  the  meat  and  drunk  the  milk  which  Abraham 
set  before  him  under  the  oaks  of  Mamre,  to  lead  him  to 
hesitate — even  to  wait  twelve  or  fourteen  hours  for  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  command?  Not  a  whit.  We  are  told  that 
"  Abraham  rose  early  in  the  morning  "  and  led  his  only  child 
to  the  slaughter,  as  if  it  were  the  most  ordinary  business 
imaginable.  Whether  the  story  has  any  historical  founda- 
tion or  not,  it  is  valuable  as  showing  that  the  writer  of  it 
conceived  Jahveh  as  a  deity  whose  requirement  of  such  a 
sacrifice  need  excite  neither  astonishment,  nor  suspicion  of 
mistake,  on  the  part  of  his  devotee.  Hence,  when  the  in- 
cessant human  sacrifices  in  Israel,  during  the  age  of  the 
kings,  are  put  down  to  the  influence  of  foreign  idolatries,  we 
may  fairly  inquire  whether  editorial  Bowdlerizing  has  not 
prevailed  over  historical  truth. 


138  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

An  attempt  to  compare  the  ethical  standards  of  two 
nations,  one  of  which  has  a  written  code,  while  the  other  has 
not,  is  beset  with  difficulties.  With  all  that  is  strange  and, 
in  many  cases,  repulsive  to  us  in  the  social  arrangements  and 
opinions  respecting  moral  obligation  among  the  Tongans,  as 
they  are  placed  before  us,  with  perfect  candor,  in  Mariner's 
account,  there  is  much  that  indicates  a  strong  ethical  sense. 
They  showed  great  kindliness  to  one  another,  and  faithful- 
ness in  standing  by  their  comrades  in  war.  No  people  could 
have  better  observed  either  the  third  or  the  fifth  command- 
ment ;  for  they  had  a  particular  horror  of  blasphemy,  and 
their  respectful  tenderness  toward  their  parents,  and,  in- 
deed, toward  old  people  in  general,  was  remarkable. 

It  can  not  be  said  that  the  eighth  commandment  was 
generally  observed,  especially  where  Europeans  were  con- 
cerned ;  but  nevertheless  a  well-bred  Tongan  looked  upon 
theft  as  a  meanness  to  which  he  would  not  condescend.  As 
to  the  seventh  commandment,  any  breach  of  it  was  consid- 
ered scandalous  in  women  and  as  something  to  be  avoided  in 
self-respecting  men,  but  among  unmarried  and  widowed 
people  chastity  was  held  very  cheap.  Nevertheless  the 
women  were  extremely  well  treated,  and  often  showed  them- 
selves capable  of  great  devotion  and  entire  faithfulness.  In 
the  matter  of  cruelty,  treachery,  and  bloodthirstiness,  these 
islanders  were  neither  better  nor  worse  than  most  peoples  of 
antiquity  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Tongans  that  they  par- 
ticularly objected  to  slander;  nor  can  covetousness  be  rer 
garded  as  their  characteristic ;  for  Mariner  says  : — 

When  any  one  is  about  to  eat,  he  always  shares  out  what 
he  has  to  those  about  him,  without  any  hesitation,  and  a  con- 
trary conduct  would  be  considered  exceedingly  vile  and  selfish 
(vol.  ii.  p.  145). 

In  fact,  they  thought  very  badly  of  the  English  when  Mar- 
iner told  them  that  his  countrymen  did  not  act  exactly  on 
that  principle.     It  further  appears  that  they  decidedly  be- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  139 

longed  to  the  school  of  intuitive  moral  philosophers,  and  be- 
lieved that  virtue  is  its  own  reward  ;  for 

Many  of  the  chiefs,  on  being  asked  by  Mr.  Mariner  what 
motives  they  had  for  conducting  themselves  with  propriety, 
besides  the  fear  of  misfortunes  in  this  life,  replied,  the  agree- 
able and  happy  feeling  which  a  man  experiences  within  him- 
self when  he  does  any  good  action  or  conducts  himself  nobly 
and  generously  as  a  man  ought  to  do ;  and  this  question  they 
answered  as  if  they  wondered  such  a  question  should  be  asked 
(vol.  ii.  p.  161). 

One  may  read  from  the  beginning  of  the  book  of  Judges 
to  the  end  of  the  books  of  Samuel  without  discovering  that 
the  old  Israelites  had  a  moral  standard  which  differs,  in  any 
essential  respect  (except  perhaps  in  regard  to  the  chastity  of 
unmarried  women)  from  that  of  the  Tongans.  Gideon, 
Jephthah,  Samson,  and  David  are  strong-handed  men,  some 
of  whom  are  not  outdone  by  any  Polynesian  chieftain  in  the 
matter  of  murder  and  treachery ;  while  Deborah's  jubilation 
over  JaePs  violation  of  the  primary  duty  of  hospitality,  prof- 
fered and  accepted  under  circumstances  which  give  a  pecul- 
iarly atrocious  character  to  the  murder  of  the  guest;  and 
her  witch-like  gloating  over  the  picture  of  the  disappointment 
of  the  mother  of  the  victim — 

The  mother  of  Sisera  cried  through  the  lattice, 
Why  is  his  chariot  so  long  in  coming  ?  (Jud.  v.  28). 

— would  not  have  been  out  of  place  in  the  choral  service  of 
the  most  sanguinary  god  in  the  Polynesian  pantheon. 

With  respect  to  the  cannibalism  which  the  Tongans  occa- 
sionally practiced,  Mariner  says  : — 

Although  a  few  young  ferocious  warriors  chose  to  imitate 
what  they  considered  a  mark  of  courageous  fierceness  in  a 
neighboring  nation,  it  was  held  in  disgust  by  everybody  else 
(vol.  ii.  p.  171). 

That  the  moral  standard  of  Tongan  life  was  less  elevated 


140  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

than  that  indicated  in  the  "  Book  of  the  Covenant "  (Exod. 
xxi.-xxiii.)  may  be  freely  admitted.  But  then  the  evidence 
that  this  Book  of  the  Covenant,  and  even  the  ten  command- 
ments as  given  in  Exodus,  were  known  to  the  Israelites  of 
the  time  of  Samuel  and  Saul,  is  (to  say  the  least)  by  no 
means  conclusive.  The  Deuteronomic  version  of  the  fourth 
commandment  is  hopelessly  discrepant  from  that  which 
stands  in  Exodus.  Would  any  later  writer  have  ventured 
to  alter  the  commandments  as  given  from  Sinai,  if  he  had 
had  before  him  that  which  professed  to  be  an  accurate  state- 
ment of  the  "  ten  words  "  in  Exodus  ?  And  if  the  writer  of 
Deuteronomy  had  not  Exodus  before  him,  what  is  the  value 
of  the  claim  of  the  version  of  the  ten  commandments  therein 
contained  to  authenticity  ?  From  one  end  to  the  other  of 
the  books  of  Judges  and  Samuel,  the  only  "  commandments 
of  Jahveh "  which  are  specially  adduced  refer  to  the  pro- 
hibition of  the  worship  of  other  gods,  or  are  orders  given  ad 
hoc,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  questions  of  morality. 

In  Polynesia,  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  in  the  appearance 
of  spiritual  beings  in  dreams,  in  possession  as  the  cause  of 
diseases,  and  in  omens,  prevailed  universally.  Mariner  tells 
a  story  of  a  woman  of  rank  who  was  greatly  attached  to 
King  Finow,  and  who,  for  the  space  of  six  months  after  his 
death,  scarcely  ever  slept  elsewhere  than  on  his  grave,  which 
she  kept  carefully  decorated  with  flowers  : — 

One  day  she  went,  with  the  deepest  affliction,  to  the  house 
of  Mo-oonga  Toobo,  the  widow  of  the  deceased  chief,  to  commu- 
nicate what  had  happened  to  her  at  the  fytoca  [grave]  during 
several  nights,  and  which  caused  her  the  greatest  anxiety. 
She  related  that  she  had  dreamed  that  the  late  How  [king]  ap- 
peared to  her  and,  with  a  countenance  full  of  disappointment, 
asked  why  there  yet  remained  at  Vavaoo  so  many  evil-design- 
ing persons :  for  he  declared  that,  since  he  had  been  at  Bolotoo, 
his  spirit  had  been  disturbed*  by  the  evil  machinations  of 

*  Compare :  "  And  Samuel  said  unto  Saul,  '  Why  hast  thou  dis- 
quieted me  %  "  (1  Sam.  xxviii.  15). 


THE  EVOLUTION  OP  THEOLOGY.  141 

wicked  men  conspiring  against  his  son ;  but  he  declared  that 
"  the  youth  "  should  not  be  molested  nor  his  power  shaken  by 
the  spirit  of  rebellion ;  that  he  therefore  came  to  her  with  a 
warning  voice  to  prevent  such  disastrous  consequences  (vol.  i. 
p.  434). 

On  inquiry  it  turned  out  that  the  charm  of  tattao  had 
been  performed  on  Finow's  grave,  with  the  view  of  injuring 
his  son,  the  reigning  king,  and  it  is  to  be  presumed  that 
it  was  this  sorcerer's  work  which  had  "  disturbed  •'  Finow's 
spirit.  The  Kev.  Kichard  Taylor  says  in  the  work  already 
cited :  "  The  account  given  of  the  witch  of  Endor  agrees 
most  remarkably  with  the  witches  of  New  Zealand  (p.  45). 

The  Tongans  also  believed  in  a  mode  of  divination  (es- 
sentially similar  to  the  casting  of  lots)  by  the  twirling  of  a 
cocoa-nut. 

The  object  of  inquiry  ...  is  chiefly  whether  a  sick  person 
will  recover;  for  this  purpose  the  nut  being  placed  on  the 
ground,  a  relation  of  the  sick  person  determines  that,  if  the  nut, 
when  again  at  rest,  points  to  such  a  quarter,  the  east  for  exam- 
ple, that  the  sick  man  will  recover;  he  then  prays  aloud  to  the 
patron  god  of  the  family  that  he  will  be  pleased  to  direct  the 
nut  so  that  it  may  indicate  the  truth ;  the  nut  being  next  spun, 
the  result  is  attended  to  with  confidence,  at  least  with  a  full 
conviction  that  it  will  truly  declare  the  intentions  of  the  gods 
at  the  time  (vol.  ii.  p.  227). 

Does  not  the  action  of  Saul,  on  a  famous  occasion,  involve 
exactly  the  same  theological  presuppositions  ? 

Therefore  Saul  said  unto  Jahveh,  the  Elohim  of  Israel,  Shew 
the  right.  And  Jonathan  and  Saul  were  taken  by  lot :  but  the 
people  escaped.  And  Saul  said,  Cast  lots  between  me  and  Jona- 
than my  son.  And  Jonathan  was  taken.  And  Saul  said  to 
Jonathan,  Tell  me  what  thou  hast  done.  .  .  .  And  the  people 
rescued  Jonathan  so  that  he  died  not  (1  Sam.  xiv.  41-45). 

As  the  Israelites  had  great  yearly  feasts,  so  had  the  Poly- 
nesians ;  as  the  Israelites  practiced  circumcision,  so  did  many 
Polynesian  people ;  as  the  Israelites  had  a  complex  and  often 


142  OONTKOVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

arbitrary-seeming  multitude  of  distinctions  between  clean  and 
unclean  things,  and  clean  and  unclean  states  of  men,  to  which 
they  attached  great  importance,  so  had  the  Polynesians  their 
notions  of  ceremonial  purity  and  their  ta Mi,  an  equally  exten- 
sive and  strange  system  of  prohibitions,  violation  of  which 
was  visited  by  death.  These  doctrines  of  cleanness  and  un- 
cleanness  no  doubt  may  have  taken  their  rise  in  the  real  or 
fancied  utility  of  the  prescriptions,  but  it  is  probable  that  the 
origin  of  many  is  indicated  in  the  curious  habit  of  the  Samo- 
ans  to  make  fetiches  of  living  animals.  It  will  be  recollected 
that  these  people  had  no  "  gods  made  with  hands,"  but  they 
substituted  animals  for  them. 
At  his  birth 

every  Samoan  was  supposed  to  be  taken  under  the  care  of  some 
tutelary  god  or  aitu  [= Atua]  as  it  was  called.  The  help  of  per- 
haps half  a  dozen  different  gods  was  invoked  in  succession  on 
the  occasion,  but  the  one  who  happened  to  be  addressed  just  as 
the  child  was  born  was  marked  and  declared  to  be  the  child's 
god  for  life. 

These  gods  were  supposed  to  appear  in  some  visible  incarna- 
tion, and  the  particular  thing  in  which  his  god  was  in  the  habit 
of  appearing  was,  to  the  Samoan,  an  object  of  veneration.  It 
was  in  fact  his  idol,  and  he  was  careful  never  to  injure  it  or 
treat  it  with  contempt.  One,  for  instance,  saw  his  god  in  the 
eel,  another  in  the  shark,  another  in  the  turtle,  another  in  the 
dog,  another  in  the  owl,  another  in  the  lizard;  and  so  on, 
throughout  all  the  fish  of  the  sea  and  birds  and  four-footed 
beasts  and  creeping  things.  In  some  of  the  shell-fish  even, 
gods  were  supposed  to  be  present.  A  man  would  eat  freely  of 
what  was  regarded  as  the  incarnation  of  the  god  of  another 
man,  but  the  incarnation  of  his  own  particular  god  he  would 
consider  it  death  to  injure  or  eat.* 

We  have  here  that  which  appears  to  be  the  origin,  or  one 
of  the  origins,  of  food  prohibitions,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
totemism  on  the  other.     When  it  is  remembered  that  the  old 

*  Turner,  Nineteen  Years  in  Polynesia,  p.  238. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.       143 

Israelites  sprang  from  ancestors  who  are  said  to  have  resided 
near,  or  in,  one  of  the  great  seats  of  ancient  Babylonian  civ- 
ilization, the  city  of  Ur ;  that  they  had  been,  it  is  said  for 
centuries,  in  close  contact  with  the  Egyptians ;  and  that,  in 
the  theology  of  both  the  Babylonians  and  the  Egyptians  there 
is  abundant  evidence,  notwithstanding  their  advanced  social 
organization,  of  the  belief  in  spirits,  with  sorcery,  ancestor- 
worship,  the  deification  of  animals,  and  the  converse  animali- 
zation  of  gods — it  obviously  needs  very  strong  evidence  to 
justify  the  belief  that  the  rude  tribes  of  Israel  did  not  share 
the  notions  from  which  their  far  more  civilized  neighbors  had 
not  emancipated  themselves. 

But  it  is  surely  needless  to  carry  the  comparison  further. 
Out  of  the  abundant  evidence  at  command,  I  think  that  suf- 
ficient has  been  produced  to  furnish  ample  grounds  for  the  be- 
lief, that  the  old  Israelites  of  the  time  of  Samuel  entertained 
theological  conceptions  which  were  on  a  level  with  those 
current  among  the  more  civilized  of  the  Polynesian  islanders, 
though  their  ethical  code  may  possibly,  in  some  respects,  have 
been  more  advanced.* 

A  theological  system  of  essentially  similar  character,  ex- 
hibiting the  same  fundamental  conceptions  respecting  the 
continued  existence  and  incessant  interference  in  human 
affairs  of  disembodied  spirits,  prevails,  or  formerly  prevailed, 
among  the  whole  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Polynesian  and 
Melanesian  islands,  and  among  the  people  of  Australia,  not- 
withstanding the  wide  differences  in  physical  character  and 
in  grade  of  civilization  which  obtain  among  them.  And  the 
same  proposition  is  true  of  the  people  who  inhabit  the  river- 
ain shores  of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  whether  Dyaks,  Malays,  Indo- 
Chinese,  Chinese,  Japanese,  the  wild  tribes  of  America,  or  the 
highly  civilized  old  Mexicans  and  Peruvians.  It  is  no  less 
true  of  the  Mongolic  nomads  of  Northern  Asia,  of  the  Asiatic 
Aryans,  and  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Komans,  and  it  holds 

*See  Lippert's  excellent  remarks  on  this  subject,  Der  Seelencult,  p.  89. 


144  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

good  among  the  Dravidians  of  the  Dekhan  and  the  negro 
tribes  of  Africa.  ~No  tribe  of  savages,  which  has  yet  been 
discovered,  has  been  conclusively  proved  to  have  so  poor  a 
theological  equipment  as  to  be  devoid  of  a  belief  in  ghosts, 
and  in  the  utility  of  some  form  of  witchcraft  in  influencing 
those  ghosts.  And  there  is  no  nation,  modern  or  ancient, 
which,  even  at  this  moment,  has  wholly  given  up  the  belief ; 
and  in  which  it  has  not,  at  one  time  or  other,  played  a  great 
part  in  practical  life. 

This  sciotheism*  as  it  might  be  called,  is  found  in  several 
degrees  of  complexity,  in  rough  correspondence  with  the 
stages  of  social  organization,  and,  like  these,  separated  by  no 
sudden  breaks. 

In  its  simplest  condition,  such  as  may  be  met  with  among 
the  Australian  savages,  theology  is  a  mere  belief  in  the  exist- 
ence, powers,  and  disposition  (usually  malignant)  of  ghostlike 
entities  who  may  be  propitiated  or  scared  away ;  but  no  cult 
can  properly  be  said  to  exist.  And,  in  this  stage,  theology  is 
wholly  independent  of  ethics.  The  moral  code,  such  as  is 
implied  by  public  opinion,  derives  no  sanction  from  the  theo- 
logical dogmas,  and  the  influence  of  the  spirits  is  supposed  to 
be  exerted  out  of  mere  caprice  or  malice. 

As  a  next  stage,  the  fundamental  fear  of  ghosts  and  the 
consequent  desire  to  propitiate  them  acquire  an  organized 
ritual  in  simple  forms  of  ancestor-worship,  such  as  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Turner  describes  among  the  people  of  Tanna  (I.  c.  p. 
88) ;  and  this  line  of  development  may  be  followed  out  until 
it  attains  its  acme  in  the  state-theology  of  China  and  the 
Kami-theology  f  of  Japan.     Each  of  these  is  essentially  an- 

*  Sciography  has  the  authority  of  Cud  worth,  Intellectual  System,  vol. 
ii.  p.  836.  Sciomancy  (o-KiofxavTeia),  which,  in  the  sense  of  divination  by 
ghosts,  may  be  found  in  Bailey's  Dictionary  (1751),  also  furnishes  a  prec- 
edent for  my  coinage. 

f  "Kami''  is  used  in  the  sense  of  Elohim ;  and  is  also,  like  our 
word  "Lord,"  employed  as  a  title  of  respect  among  men,  as  indeed 
Elohim  was. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.       145 

ccstor-worship,  the  ancestors  being  reckoned  back  through 
family  groups  of  higher  and  higher  order,  sometimes  with 
strict  reference  to  the  principle  of  agnation,  as  in  old  Rome ; 
and,  as  in  the  latter,  it  is  intimately  bound  up  with  the  whole 
organization  of  the  state.  There  are  no  idols;  inscribed 
tablets  in  China,  and  strips  of  paper  lodged  in  a  peculiar 
portable  shrine  in  Japan,  represent  the  souls  of  the  deceased, 
or  the  special  seats  which  they  occupy  when  sacrifices  are 
offered  by  their  descendants.  In  Japan  it  is  interesting  to 
observe  that  a  national  Kami — Ten-zio-dai-zin — is  worshiped 
as  a  sort  of  Jahveh  by  the  nation  in  general,  and  (as  Lippert 
has  observed)  it  is  singular  that  his  special  seat  is  a  portable 
litter-like  shrine,  termed  the  Mikosi,  in  some  sort  analogous 
to  the  Israelitic  ark.  In  China,  the  emperor  is  the  represen- 
tative of  the  primitive  ancestors,  and  stands,  as  it  were,  be- 
tween them  and  the  supreme  cosmic  deities — Heaven  and 
Earth — who  are  superadded  to  them,  and  who  answer  to  the 
Tangaloa  and  the  Maui  of  the  Polynesians. 

Sciotheism,  under  the  form  of  the  deification  of  ancestral 
ghosts,  in  its  most  pronounced  form,  is  therefore  the  chief  ele- 
ment in  the  theology  of  a  great  moiety,  possibly  of  more  than 
half,  of  the  human  race.  I  think  this  must  be  taken  to  be  a 
matter  of  fact — though  various  opinions  may  be  held  as  to  how 
this  ancestor- worship  came  about.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  no  less  a  matter  of  fact  that  there  are  very  few  people 
without  additional  gods,  who  can  not,  with  certainty,  be 
accounted  for  as  deified  ancestors. 

With  all  respect  for  the  distinguished  authorities  on  the 
other  side,  I  can  not  find  good  reasons  for  accepting  the 
theory  that  the  cosmic  deities — who  are  superadded  to  deified 
ancestors  even  in  China ;  who  are  found  all  over  Polynesia, 
in  Tangaloa  and  Maui,  and  in  old  Peru,  in  the  Sun — are  the 
product  either  of  the  "  search  after  the  infinite,"  or  of  mis- 
takes arising  out  of  the  confusion  of  a  great  chief's  name 
with  the  thing  signified  by  the  name.  But,  however  this 
may  be,  I  think  it  is  again  merely  matter  of  fact  that,  among 


146  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

a  large  portion  of  mankind,  ancestor- worship  is  more  or  less 
thrown  into  the  background  either  by  such  cosmic  deities,  or 
bj  tribal  gods  of  uncertain  origin,  who  have  been  raised  to 
eminence  by  the  superiority  in  warfare,  or  otherwise,  of  their 
worshipers. 

Among  certain  nations,  the  polytheistic  theology,  thus 
constituted,  has  become  modified  by  the  selection  of  some 
one  cosmic  or  tribal  god,  as  the  only  god  to  whom  worship  is 
due  on  the  part  of  that  nation  (though  it  is  by  no  means  de- 
nied that  other  nations  have  a  right  to  worship  other  gods), 
and  thus  results  a  worship  of  one  God — monolatry  ^  as  Well- 
hausen  calls  it — which  is  very  different  from  genuine  mono- 
theism.* In  ancestral  sciotheism,  and  in  this  monolatry,  the 
ethical  code,  often  of  a  very  high  order,  comes  into  closer  re- 
lation with  the  theological  creed.  Morality  is  taken  under 
the  patronage  of  the  god  or  gods,  who  reward  all  morally 
good  conduct  and  punish  all  morally  evil  conduct  in  this 
world  or  the  next.  At  the  same  time,  however,  they  are  con- 
ceived to  be  thoroughly  human,  and  they  visit  any  shadow  of 
disrespect  to  themselves,  shown  by  disobedience  to  their  com- 
mands, or  by  delay,  or  carelessness,  in  carrying  them  out,  as 
severely  as  any  breach  of  the  moral  laws.  Piety  means 
minute  attention  to  the  due  performonce  of  all  sacred  rites, 
and  covers  any  number  of  lapses  in  morality,  just  as  cruelty, 
treachery,  murder,  and  adultery  did  not  bar  David's  claim  to 
the  title  of  the  man  after  God's  own  heart  among  the  Israel- 
ites; crimes  against  men  may  be  expiated,  but  blasphemy 
against  the  gods  is  an  unpardonable  sin.  Men  forgive  all  in- 
juries but  those  which  touch  their  self-esteem;  and  they 
make  their  gods  after  their  own  likeness,  in  their  own  image 
make  they  them. 

It  is  in  the  category  of  monolatry  that  I  conceive  the 
theology  of  the  old  Israelites  must  be  ranged.     They  were 


[The  Assyrians  thus  raised  Assur  to  a  position  of  pre-eminence.] 


THE  EVOLUTION   OF  THEOLOGY.  147 

polytheists,  in  so  far  as  they  admitted  the  existence  of  other 
Elohim  of  divine  rank  beside  Jahveh;  they  differed  from 
ordinary  polytheists,  in  so  far  as  they  believed  that  Jahveh 
was  the  supreme  god  and  the  one  proper  object  of  their  own 
national  worship.  But  it  will  doubtless  be  objected  that  I 
have  been  building  up  a  fictitious  Israelitic  theology  on  the 
foundation  of  the  recorded  habits  and  customs  of  the  people, 
when  they  had  lapsed  from  the  ordinances  of  their  great  law- 
giver and  prophet  Moses,  and  that  my  conclusions  may  be 
good  for  the  perverts  to  Canaanitish  theology,  but  not  for  the 
true  observers  of  the  Sinaitic  legislation.  The  answer  to  the 
objection  is  that — so  far  as  I  can  form  a  judgment  of  that 
which  is  well  ascertained  in  the  history  of  Israel — there  is 
very  little  ground  for  believing  that  we  know  much,  either 
about  the  theological  and  social  value  of  the  influence  of 
Moses,  or  about  what  happened  during  the  wanderings  in  the 
Desert. 

The  account  of  the  Exodus  and  of  the  occurrences  in  the 
Sinaitic  peninsula ;  in  fact,  all  the  history  of  Israel  before 
the  invasion  of  Canaan,  is  full  of  wonderful  stories  which 
may  be  true,  in  so  far  as  they  are  conceivable  occurrences, 
but  which  are  certainly  not  probable,  and  which  I,  for  one, 
decline  to  accept  until  evidence,  which  deserves  that  name,  is 
offered  of  their  historical  truth.  Up  to  this  time  I  know  of 
none.*  Furthermore,  I  see  no  answer  to  the  argument  that 
one  has ;  no  right  to  pick  out  of  an  obviously  unhistorical 
statement  the  assertions  which  happen  to  be  probable  and 
discard  the  rest.  But  it  is  also  certain  that  a  primitively 
veracious  tradition  may  be  smothered  under  subsequent 
mythical  additions,  and  that  one  has  no  right  to  cast  away 
the  former  along  with  the  latter.  Thus,  perhaps  the  fairest 
way  of  stating  the  case  may  be  as  follows. 

*  I  refer  those  who  wish  to  know  the  reasons  which  lead  me  to  take 
up  this  position  to  the  works  of  Reuss  and  Wellhausen,  [and  especially 
to  Stade's  Geschichte  des  Vollces  Israel.] 


148  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

There  can  be  no  a  priori  objection  to  the  supposition  that 
the  Israelites  were  delivered  from  their  Egyptian  bondage  by 
a  leader  called  Moses,  and  that  he  exerted  great  influence 
over  their  subsequent  organization  in  the  desert.  There  is 
no  reason  to  doubt  that,  during  their  residence  in  the  land  of 
Goshen,  the  Israelites  knew  nothing  of  Jahveh ;  but,  as  their 
own  prophets  declare  (see  Ezek.  xx),  were  polytheistic  idol- 
ators,  sharing  in  the  worst  practices  of  their  neighbors.  As  to 
their  conduct  in  other  respects,  nothing  is  known.  But  it 
may  fairly  be  suspected  that  their  ethics  were  not  of  a  higher 
order  than  those  of  Jacob  their  progenitor,  in  which  case 
they  might  derive  great  profit  from  contact  with  Egyptian 
society,  which  held  honesty  and  truthfulness  in  the  highest 
esteem.  Thanks  to  the  Egyptologers,  we  now  know,  with 
all  requisite  certainty,  the  moral  standard  of  that  society  in 
the  time,  and  long  before  the  time,  of  Moses  It  can  be 
determined  from  the  scrolls  buried  with  the  mummified  dead 
and  from  the  inscriptions  on  the  tombs  and  memorial  statues 
of  that  age.  For,  though  the  lying  of  epitaphs  is  proverbial, 
so  far  as  their  subject  is  concerned,  they  give  an  unmistak- 
able insight  into  that  which  the  writers  and  the  readers  of 
them  think  praiseworthy. 

In  the  famous  tombs  at  Beni  Hassan  there  is  a  record  of 
the  life  of  Prince  Nakht,  who  served  Osertasen  II.,  a  Pharaoh 
of  the  twelfth  dynasty,  as  governor  of  a  province.  The  in- 
scription speaks  in  his  name  :  "  I  was  a  benevolent  and  kindly 
governor  who  loved  his  country.  .  .  .  Never  was  a  little 
child  distressed  nor  a  widow  ill-treated  by  me.  I  have  never 
repelled  a  workman  or  hindered  a  shepherd.  I  gave  alike  to 
the  widow  and  to  the  married  woman,  and  have  not  preferred 
the  great  to  the  small  in  my  gifts."  And  we  have  the  high 
authority  of  the  late  Dr.  Samuel  Birch  for  the  statement  that 
the  inscriptions  of  the  twelfth  dynasty  abound  in  injunctions 
of  a  high  ethical  character.  "  To  feed  the  hungry,  give 
drink  to  the  thirsty,  clothe  the  naked,  bury  the  dead,  loyally 
serve  the  king,  formed  the  first  duty  of  a  pious  man  and 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        149 

faithful  subject."  *  The  people  for  whom  these  inscriptions 
embodied  their  ideal  of  praiseworthiness  assuredly  had  no 
imperfect  conception  of  either  justice  or  mercy.  But  there  is 
a  document  which  gives  still  better  evidence  of  the  moral 
standard  of  the  Egyptians.  It  is  the  "  Book  of  the  Dead,"  a 
sort  of  "  Guide  to  Spiritland,"  the  whole,  or  a  part,  of  which 
was  buried  with  the  mummy  of  every  well-to-do  Egyptian, 
while  extracts  from  it  are  found  in  innumerable  inscriptions. 
Portions  of  this  work  are  of  extreme  antiquity,  evidence  of 
their  existence  occurring  as  far  back  as  the  fifth  and  sixth 
dynasties ;  while  the  125th  chapter,  which  constitutes  a  sort 
of  book  by  itself,  and  is  known  as  the  "  Book  of  Eedemption 
in  the  Hall  of  the  two  Truths,"  is  frequently  inscribed  upon 
coffins  and  other  monuments  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty  (that 
under  which,  there  is  reason  to  believe,  the  Israelites  were  op- 
pressed and  the  Exodus  took  place),  and  it  occurs,  more  than 
once,  in  the  famous  tombs  of  the  kings  of  this  and  the  preced- 
ing dynasty  at  Thebes. f  This  "Book  of  Redemption"  is 
chiefly  occupied  by  the  so-called  "  negative  confession  "  made 
to  the  forty-two  Divine  Judges,  in  which  the  soul  of  the  dead 
denies  that  he  has  committed  faults  of  various  kinds.  It  is, 
therefore,  obvious  that  the  Egyptians  conceived  that  their  gods 
commanded  them  not  to  do  the  deeds  which  are  here  denied. 
The  "  Book  of  Eedemption,"  in  fact,  implies  the  existence 
in  the  mind  of  the  Egyptians,  if  not  in  a  formal  writing,  of 
a  series  of  ordinances  couched,  like  the  majority  of  the  ten 
commandments,  in  negative  terms.  And  it  is  easy  to  prove 
the  implied  existence  of  a  series  which  nearly  answers  to  the 
"  ten  words."  Of  course  a  polytheistic  and  image-worship- 
ing people,  who  observed  a  great  many  holy  days,  but  no 
Sabbaths,  could  have  nothing  analogous  to  the  first  or  the 
second  and  the  fourth  commandments  of  the  Decalogue ;  but, 

*  Bunsen,  Egypt's  Place,  vol.  v.  p.  129,  note. 

f  See  Birch,  in  Egypt's  Place,  vol.  v. ;   and  Brugsch,  History  of 
Egypt 


150  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

answering  to  the  third,  is  "  I  have  not  blasphemed ; "  to  the 
fifth,  "  I  have  not  reviled  the  face  of  the  king  or  my  father;" 
to  the  sixth,  "  I  have  not  murdered ; "  to  the  seventh,  "  I  have 
not  committed  adultery  ;  "  to  the  eighth,  "  I  have  not  stolen," 
"  I  have  not  done  fraud  to  man  ;  "  to  the  ninth,  "  I  have  not 
told  falsehoods  in  the  tribunal  of  truth,"  and,  further,  "  I 
have  not  calumniated  the  slave  to  his  master."  I  find  noth- 
ing exactly  similar  to  the  tenth  commandment ;  but  that  the 
inward  disposition  of  mind  was  held  to  be  of  no  less  impor- 
tance than  the  outward  act  is  to  be  gathered  from  the  praises 
of  kindliness  already  cited  and  the  cry  of  "  I  am  pure,"  which 
is  repeated  by  the  soul  on  trial.  Moreover,  there  is  a  minute- 
ness of  detail  in  the  confession  which  shows  no  little  delicacy 
of  moral  appreciation — "  I  have  not  privily  done  evil  against 
mankind,"  "  I  have  not  afflicted  men,"  "  I  have  not  withheld 
milk  from  the  mouth  of  sucklings,"  "  I  have  not  been  idle," 
"  I  have  not  played  the  hypocrite,"  "  I  have  not  told  false- 
hoods," "  I  have  not  corrupted  woman  or  man,"  "  I  have  not 
caused  fear,"  "  I  have  not  multiplied  words  in  speaking." 

Would  that  the  moral  sense  of  the  nineteenth  century  a.d. 
were  as  far  advanced  as  that  of  the  Egyptians  in  the  nineteenth 
century  B.C.  in  this  last  particular !  What  incalculable  bene- 
fit to  mankind  would  flow  from  strict  observance  of  the  com- 
mandment, "  Thou  shalt  not  multiply  words  in  speaking  ! " 
Nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  stress  which  the  old 
Egyptians,  here  and  elsewhere,  lay  upon  this  and  other  kinds 
of  truthfulness,  as  compared  with  the  absence  of  any  such  re- 
quirement in  the  Israelitic  Decalogue,  in  which  only  a  specific 
kind  of  untruthfulness  is  forbidden. 

If,  as  the  story  runs,  Moses  was  adopted  by  a  princess  of 
the  royal  house,  and  was  instructed  in  all  the  wisdom  of  the 
Egyptians,  it  is  surely  incredible  that  he  should  not  have 
been  familiar,  from  his  youth  up,  with  the  high  moral  code 
implied  in  the  "  Book  of  Redemption."  It  is  surely  impossi- 
ble that  he  should  have  been  less  familiar  with  the  complete 
legal  system,  and  with  the  method  of  administration  of  jus- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  151 

tice,  which,  even  in  his  time,  had  enabled  the  Egyptian  peo- 
ple to  hold  together,  as  a  complex  social  organization,  for  a 
period  far  longer  than  the  duration  of  old  Roman  society, 
from  the  building  of  the  city  to  the  death  of  the  last  Cassar. 
Nor  need  we  look  to  Moses  alone  for  the  influence  of  Egypt 
upon  Israel.  It  is  true  that  the  Hebrew  nomads  who  came 
into  contact  with  the  Egyptians  of  Osertasen,  or  of  Ramses, 
stood  in  much  the  same  relation  to  them,  in  point  of  culture, 
as  a  Germanic  tribe  did  to  the  Romans  of  Tiberius  or  of 
Marcus  Antoninus,  or  as  Captain  Cook's  Omai  did  to  the 
English  of  George  the  Third.  But,  at  the  same  time,  any 
difficulty  of  communication  which  might  have  arisen  out  of 
this  circumstance  was  removed  by  the  long  pre-existing  inter- 
course of  other  Semites,  of  every  grade  of  civilization,  with 
the  Egyptians.  In  Mesopotamia  and  elsewhere,  as  in  Phe- 
nicia,  Semitic  people  had  attained  to  a  social  organization  as 
advanced  as  that  of  the  Egyptians ;  Semites  had  conquered 
and  occupied  Lower  Egypt  for  centuries.  So  extensively  had 
Semitic  influences  penetrated  Egypt  that  the  Egyptian  lan- 
guage, during  the  period  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty,  is  said 
by  Brugsch  to  be  as  full  of  Semitisms  as  German  is  of  Galli- 
cisms; while  Semitic  deities  had  supplanted  the  Egyptian 
gods  at  Heliopolis  and  elsewhere.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Semites,  as  far  as  Phenicia,  were  extensively  influenced  by 
Egypt. 

It  is  generally  admitted  *  that  Moses,  Phinehas  (and  per- 
haps Aaron),  are  names  of  Egyptian  origin,  and  there  is  ex- 
cellent authority  for  the  statement  that  the  name  Abir,  which 
the  Israelites  gave  to  their  golden  calf,  and  which  is  also  used 
to  signify  the  strong,  the  heavenly,  and  even  God,f  is  simply 
the  Egyptian  Apis.  Brugsch  points  out  that  the  god  Turn, 
or  Tom,  who  was  the  special  object  of  worship  in  the  city  of 

*  Even  by  Graetz,  who,  though  a  fair  enough  historian,  can  not  be 
accused  of  any  desire  to  over-estimate  the  importance  of  Egyptian  influ- 
ence upon  his  people. 

f  Graetz,  Geschicte  der  Juden,  Bd.  i.  p.  370. 


152  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Pi-Tom,  with  which  the  Israelites  were  only  too  familiar,  was 
called  Ankh  and  the  "  great  god,"  and  had  no  image.  Ankh 
means  "  He  who  lives,"  "  the  living  one,"  a  name  the  resem- 
blance of  which  to  the  "  I  am  that  I  am  "  of  Exodus  is  un- 
mistakable, whatever  may  be  the  value  of  the  fact.  Every 
discussion  of  Israelitic  ritual  seeks  and  finds  the  explanation 
of  its  details  in  the  portable  sacred  chests,  the  altars,  the 
priestly  dress,  the  breastplate,  the  incense,  and  the  sacrifices 
depicted  on  the  monuments  of  Egypt.  But  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  these  signs  of  the  influence  of  Egypt  upon 
Israel  are  not  necessarily  evidence  that  such  influence  was 
exerted  before  the  Exodus.  It  may  have  come  much  later, 
through  the  close  connection  of  the  Israel  of  David  and  Solo- 
mon, first  with  Phenicia  and  then  with  Egypt. 

If  we  suppose  Moses  to  have  been  a  man  of  the  stamp  of 
Calvin,  there  is  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  that  he  may  have 
constructed  the  substance  of  the  ten  words,  and  even  of  the 
Book  of  the  Covenant,  which  curiously  resembles  parts  of  the 
Book  of  the  Dead,  from  the  foundation  of  Egyptian  ethics 
and  theology  which  had  filtered  through  to  the  Israelites  in 
general,  or  had  been  furnished  specially  to  himself  by  his 
early  education;  just  as  the  great  Genevese  reformer  built 
up  a  puritanic  social  organization  on  so  much  as  remained  of 
the  ethics  and  theology  of  the  Eoman  Church,  after  he  had 
trimmed  them  to  his  liking. 

Thus,  I  repeat,  I  see  no  a  priori  objection  to  the  assump- 
tion that  Moses  may  have  endeavored  to  give  his  people  a 
theologico-political  organization  based  on  the  ten  command- 
ments (though  certainly  not  quite  in  their  present  form)  and 
the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  contained  in  our  present  Book  of 
Exodus.  But  whether  there  is  such  evidence  as  amounts  to 
proof,  or,  I  had  better  say,  to  probability,  that  even  this  much 
of  the  Pentateuch  owes  its  origin  to  Moses  is  another  matter. 
The  mythical  character  of  the  accessories  of  the  Sinaitic  his- 
tory is  patent,  and  it  would  take  a  good  deal  more  evidence 
than  is  afforded  by  the  bare  assertion  of  an  unknown  writer 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        153 

to  justify  the  belief  that  the  people  who  "  saw  the  thunder- 
ings  and  the  lightnings  and  the  voice  of  the  trumpet  and  the 
mountain  smoking  "  (Exod.  xx.  18) ;  to  whom  Jahveh  orders 
Moses  to  say,  "  Ye  yourselves  have  seen  that  I  have  talked 
with  you  from  heaven.  Ye  shall  not  make  other  gods  with 
me ;  gods  of  silver  and  gods  of  gold  ye  shall  not  make  unto 
you "  (ibid.  22,  23),  should,  less  than  six  weeks  afterward, 
have  done  the  exact  thing  they  were  thus  awfully  forbidden 
to  do.  Nor  is  the  credibility  of  the  story  increased  by  the 
statement  that  Aaron,  the  brother  of  Moses,  the  witness  and 
fellow- worker  of  the  miracles  before  Pharaoh,  was  their  leader 
and  the  artificer  of  the  idol.  And  yet,  at  the  same  time, 
Aaron  was  apparently  so  ignorant  of  wrongdoing  that  he 
made  proclamation,  "  To-morrow  shall  be  a  feast  to  Jahveh," 
and  the  people  proceeded  to  offer  their  burnt-offerings  and 
peace-offerings,  as  if  everything  in  their  proceedings  must  be 
satisfactory  to  the  Deity  with  whom  they  had  just  made  a 
solemn  covenant  to  abolish  image- worship.  It  seems  to  me 
that,  on  a  survey  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case,  only  a  very  cau- 
tious and  hypothetical  judgment  is  justifiable.  It  may  be 
that  Moses  profited  by  the  opportunities  afforded  him  of 
access  to  what  was  best  in  Egyptian  society  to  become  ac- 
quainted, not  only  with  its  advanced  ethical  and  legal  code, 
but  with  the  more  or  less  pantheistic  unification  of  the  Divine 
to  which  the  speculations  of  the  Egyptian  thinkers,  like  those 
of  all  polytheistic  philosophers,  from  Polynesia  to  Greece, 
tend ;  if  indeed  the  theology  of  the  period  of  the  nineteenth 
dynasty  was  not,  as  some  Egyptologists  think,  a  modification 
of  an  earlier,  more  distinctly  monotheistic  doctrine  of  a  long 
antecedent  age.  It  took  only  half  a  dozen  centuries  for  the 
theology  of  Paul  to  become  the  theology  of  Gregory  the 
Great ;  and  it  is  possible  that  twenty  centuries  lay  between 
the  theology  of  the  first  worshipers  in  the  sanctuary  of  the 
Sphinx  and  that  of  the  priests  of  Eamses  Maimun. 

It  may  be  that  the  ten  commandments  and  the  Book  of 
the  Covenant  are  based  upon  faithful  traditions  of  the  efforts 


154  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  a  great  leader  to  raise  his  followers  to  his  own  level.  For 
myself,  as  a  matter  of  pious  opinion,  I  like  to  think  so ;  as  I 
like  to  imagine  that,  between  Moses  and  Samuel,  there  may 
have  been  many  a  seer,  many  a  herdsmen  such  as  him  of 
Tekoah,  lonely  amid  the  hills  of  Ephrahn  and  Judah,  who 
cherished  and  kept  alive  these  traditions.  In  the  present  re- 
sults of  Biblical  criticism,  however,  I  can  discover  no  justifi- 
cation for  the  common  assumption  that,  between  the  time  of 
Joshua  and  that  of  Eehoboam,  the  Israelites  were  familiar 
with  either  the  Deuteronomic  or  the  Levitical  legislation  ;  or 
that  the  theology  of  the  Israelites,  from  the  king  who  sat  on 
the  throne  to  the  lowest  of  his  subjects,  was  in  any  important 
respect  different  from  that  which  might  naturally  be  ex- 
pected from  their  previous  history  and  the  conditions  of  their 
existence.  But  there  is  excellent  evidence  to  the  contrary 
effect.  And,  for  my  part,  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  like 
the  rest  of  the  world,  the  Israelites  had  passed  through  a 
period  of  mere  ghost-worship,  and  had  advanced  through 
Ancestor-worship  and  Fetichism  and  Totemism  to  the  theo- 
logical level  at  which  we  find  them  in  the  books  of  Judges 
and  Samuel. 

All  the  more  remarkable,  therefore,  is  the  extraordinary 
change  which  is  to  be  noted  in  the  eighth  century  B.  c.  The 
student  who  is  familiar  with  the  theology  implied,  or  ex- 
pressed, in  the  books  of  Judges,  Samuel,  and  the  first  book 
of  Kings,  finds  himself  in  a  new  world  of  thought,  in  the  full 
tide  of  a  great  reformation,  when  he  reads  Joel,  Amos,  Hosea, 
Isaiah,  Micah,  and  Jeremiah. 

The  essence  of  this  change  is  the  reversal  of  the  position 
which,  in  primitive  society,  ethics  holds  in  relation  to  theol- 
ogy. Originally,  that  which  men  worship  is  a  theological 
hypothesis,  not  a  moral  ideal.  The  prophets,  in  substance,  if 
not  always  in  form,  preach  the  opposite  doctrine.  They  are 
constantly  striving  to  free  the  moral  ideal  from  the  stifling 
embrace  of  the  current  theology  and  its  concomitant  ritual. 


THE  EVOLUTION   OF  THEOLOGY.  155 

Theirs  was  not  an  intellectual  criticism,  argued  on  strictly 
scientific  grounds  ;  the  image- worshipers  and  the  believers  in 
the  efficacy  of  sacrifices  and  ceremonies  might  logically  have 
held  their  own  against  anything  the  prophets  have  to  say ;  it 
was  an  ethical  criticism.  From  the  height  of  his  moral  in- 
tuition— that  the  whole  duty  of  man  is  to  do  justice  and  love 
mercy  and  to  bear  himself  as  humbly  as  befits  his  insignifi- 
cance in  face  of  the  Infinite — the  prophet  simply  laughs  at 
the  idolaters  of  stocks  and  stones  and  the  idolaters  of  ritual. 
Idols  of  the  first  kind,  in  his  experience,  were  inseparably 
united  with  the  practice  of  immorality,  and  they  were  to  be 
ruthlessly  destroyed.  As  for  sacrifices  and  ceremonies,  what- 
ever their  intrinsic  value  might  be,  they  might  be  tolerated 
on  condition  of  ceasing  to  be  idols;  they  might  even  be 
praiseworthy  on  condition  of  being  made  to  subserve  the 
worship  of  the  true  Jahveh — the  moral  ideal. 

If  the  realm  of  David  had  remained  undivided,  if  the 
Assyrian  and  the  Chaldean  and  the  Egyptian  had  left  Israel 
to  the  ordinary  course  of  development  of  an  Oriental  king- 
dom, it  is  possible  that  the  effects  of  the  reforming  zeal  of 
the  prophets  of  the  eighth  and  seventh  centuries  might  have 
been  effaced  by  the  growth,  according  to  its  inevitable  tend- 
encies, of  the  theology  which  they  combated.  But  the  cap- 
tivity made  the  fortune  of  the  ideas  which  it  was  the  privi- 
lege of  these  men  to  launch  upon  an  endless  career.  With 
the  abolition  of  the  Temple-services  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  the  priest  must  have  lost  and  the  scribe  gained  in- 
fluence. The  puritanism  of  a  vigorous  minority  among  the 
Babylonian  Jews  rooted  out  polytheism  from  all  its  hiding- 
places  in  the  theology  which  they  had  inherited ;  they  cre- 
ated the  first  consistent,  remorseless,  naked  monotheism, 
which,  so  far  as  history  records,  appeared  in  the  world  (for 
Zoroastrism  is  practically  ditheism,  and  Buddhism  any-theism 
or  no-theism) ;  and  they  inseparably  united  therewith  an 
ethical  code,  which  for  its  purity  and  for  its  efficiency  as  a 
bond  of  social  life,  was  and  is,  unsurpassed.     So  I  think  we 


156  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

must  not  judge  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  and  their  followers  too 
hardly,  if  they  exemplified  the  usual  doom  of  poor  humanity 
to  escape  from  one  error  only  to  fall  into  another;  if  they 
failed  to  free  themselves  as  completely  from  the  idolatry  of 
ritual  as  they  had  from  that  of  images  and  dogmas ;  if  they 
cherished  the  new  fetters  of  the  Levitical  legislation  which 
they  had  fitted  upon  themselves  and  their  nation,  as  though 
such  bonds  had  the  sanctity  of  the  obligations  of  morality ; 
and  if  they  led  succeeding  generations  to  spend  their  best 
energies  in  building  that  "  hedge  round  the  Torah,"  which 
was  meant  to  preserve  both  ethics  and  theology,  but  which 
too  often  had  the  effect  of  pampering  the  latter  and  starving 
the  former.  The  world  being  what  it  was,  it  is  to  be  doubted 
whether  Israel  would  have  preserved  intact  the  pure  ore  of 
religion,  which  the  prophets  had  extracted  for  the  use  of 
mankind  as  well  as  for  their  nation,  had  not  the  leaders 
of  the  nation  been  zealous,  even  to  death,  for  the  dross  of  the 
law  in  which  it  was  imbedded.  The  struggle  of  the  Jews, 
under  the  Maccabean  house,  against  the  Seleucidse  was  as 
important  for  mankind  as  that  of  the  Greeks  against  the 
Persians.  And,  of  all  the  strange  ironies  of  history,  per- 
haps the  strangest  is  that  "  Pharisee  "  is  current,  as  a  term 
of  reproach,  among  the  theological  descendants  of  that 
sect  of  Nazarenes  who,  without  the  martyr  spirit  of  those 
primitive  Puritans,  would  never  have  come  into  existence. 
They,  like  their  historical  successors,  our  own  Puritans, 
have  shared  the  general  fate  of  the  poor  wise  men  who  save 
cities. 

A  criticism  of  theology  from  the  side  of  science  is  not 
thought  of  by  the  prophets,  and  is  at  most  indicated  in  the 
books  of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  in  both  of  which  the  problem 
of  vindicating  the  ways  of  God  to  man  is  given  up,  though 
on  different  grounds,  as  a  hopeless  one.  But  with  the  exten- 
sive introduction  of  Greek  thought  among  the  Jews,  which 
took  place,  not  only  during  the  domination  of  the  Seleucidse 
in  Palestine,  but  in  the  great  Judaic  colony  which  flourished 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  157 

in  Egypt  under  the  Ptolemies,  criticism,  on  both  ethical  and 
scientific  grounds,  took  a  new  departure. 

In  the  hands  of  the  Alexandrian  Jews,  as  represented  by 
Philo,  the  fundamental  axiom  of  later  Jewish,  as  of  Christian 
monotheism,  that  the  Deity  is  infinitely  perfect  and  infinitely 
good,  worked  itself  out  into  its  logical  consequence — agnos- 
tic theism.  Philo  will  allow  of  no  point  of  contact  between 
God  and  a  world  in  which  evil  exists.  For  him  God  has  no 
relation  to  space  or  to  time,  and,  as  infinite,  suffers  no  predi- 
cate beyond  that  of  existence.  It  is,  therefore,  absurd  to 
ascribe  to  Him  mental  faculties  and  affections  comparable  in 
the  remotest  degree  to  those  of  men ;  He  is  in  no  way  an  ob- 
ject of  cognition;  He  is  a7roios  and  aKdTaXrjKTos "* — without 
quality  and  incomprehensible.  That  is  to  say,  the  Alexan- 
drian Jew  of  the  first  century  had  anticipated  the  reasonings 
of  Hamilton  and  Mansell  in  the  nineteenth  and,  for  him,  God 
is  the  Unknowable  in  the  sense  in  which  that  term  is  used  by 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  Moreover,  Philo's  definition  of  the 
Supreme  Being  would  not  be  inconsistent  with  that  "  sub- 
stantia constans  infinitis  attributis,  quorum  unumquodque 
Eeternam  et  infinitam  essentiam  exprimit,"  given  by  another 
great  Israelite,  were  it  not  that  Spinoza's  doctrine  of  the  im- 
manence of  the  Deity  in  the  world  puts  him,  at  any  rate 
formally,  at  the  antipodes  of  theological  speculation.  But 
the  conception  of  the  essential  incognoscibility  of  the  Deity 
is  the  same  in  each  case.  However,  Philo  was  too  thorough 
an  Israelite  and  too  much  the  child  of  his  time  to  be  content 
with  this  agnostic  position.  With  the  help  of  the  Platonic 
and  Stoic  philosophy,  he  constructed  an  apprehensible,  if  not 
comprehensible,  quasi-deity  out  of  the  Logos;  while  other 
more  or  less  personified  divine  powers,  or  attributes,  bridged 
over  the  interval  between  God  and  man ;  between  the  sacred 

*  See  the  careful  analysis  of  the  work  of  the  Alexandrian  philoso- 
pher and  theologian  (who,  it  should  be  remembered,  was  a  most  devout 
Jew,  held  in  the  highest  esteem  by  his  countrymen)  in  Siegfried's  Philo 
von  Alexandrien,  1875.     [Also  Dr.  J.  Drummond's  Philo  Judceus,  1888.] 


158  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

existence,  too  pure  to  be  called  by  any  name  which  implied  a 
conceivable  quality,  and  the  gross  and  evil  world  of  matter. 
In  order  to  get  over  the  ethical  difficulties  presented  by  the 
naive  naturalism  of  many  parts  of  those  Scriptures,  in  the 
divine  authority  of  which  he  firmly  believed,  Philo  borrowed 
from  the  Stoics  (who  had  been  in  like  straits  in  respect  of 
Greek  mythology),  that  great  Excalibur  which  they  had 
forged  with  infinite  pains  and  skill — the  method  of  allegor- 
ical interpretation.  This  mighty  "  two-handed  engine  at  the 
door  "  of  the  theologian  is  warranted  to  make  a  speedy  end 
of  any  and  every  moral  or  intellectual  difficulty,  by  showing 
that,  taken  allegorically  or,  as  it  is  otherwise  said,  "  poetically," 
or,  "  in  a  spiritual  sense,"  the  plainest  words  mean  whatever 
a  pious  interpreter  desires  they  should  mean.  In  Biblical 
phrase,  Zeno  (who  probably  had  a  strain  of  Semitic  blood  in 
him)  was  the  "  father  of  all  such  as  reconcile."  No  doubt 
Philo  and  his  followers  were  eminently  religious  men ;  but 
they  did  endless  injury  to  the  cause  of  religion  by  laying  the 
foundations  of  a  new  theology,  while  equipping  the  defend- 
ers of  it  with  the  subtlest  of  all  weapons  of  offense  and  de- 
fense, and  with  an  inexhaustible  store  of  sophistical  argu- 
ments of  the  most  plausible  aspect. 

The  question  of  the  real  bearing  upon  theology  of  the 
influence  exerted  by  the  teaching  of  Philo's  contemporary, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  is  one  upon  which  it  is  not  germane  to 
my  present  purpose  to  enter.  I  take  it  simply  as  an  unques- 
tionable fact  that  his  immediate  disciples,  known  to  their 
countrymen  as  "  Nazarenes,"  were  regarded  as,  and  consid- 
ered themselves  to  be,  perfectly  orthodox  Jews  belonging  to 
the  puritanic  or  pharisaic  section  of  their  people,  and  differ- 
ing from  the  rest  only  in  their  belief  that  the  Messiah  had 
already  come.  Christianity,  it  is  said,  first  became  clearly 
differentiated  at  Antioch,  and  it  separated  itself  from  ortho- 
dox Judaism  by  denying  the  obligation  of  the  right  of  cir- 
cumcision and  of  the  food  prohibitions,  prescribed  by  the  law. 
Henceforward  theology  became  relatively  stationary  among 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.        159 

the  Jews,*  and  the  history  of  its  rapid  progress  in  a  new 
course  of  evolution  is  the  history  of  the  Christian  Churches, 
orthodox  and  heterodox.  The  steps  in  this  evolution  are 
obvious.  The  first  is  the  birth  of  a  new  theological  scheme 
arising  out  of  the  union  of  elements  derived  from  Greek  phi- 
losophy with  elements  derived  from  Israeli  tic  theology.  In 
the  fourth  Gospel,  the  Logos,  raised  to  a  somewhat  higher 
degree  of  personification  than  in  the  Alexandrian  theosophy, 
is  identified  with  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  In  the  Epistles,  espe- 
cially the  later  of  those  attributed  to  Paul,  the  Israelitic  ideas 
of  the  Messiah  and  of  sacrificial  atonement  coalesce  with  one 
another  and  with  the  embodiment  of  the  Logos  in  Jesus, 
until  the  apotheosis  of  the  Son  of  man  is  almost,  or  quite, 
effected.  The  history  of  Christian  dogma,  from  Justin  to 
Athanasius,  is  a  record  of  continual  progress  in  the  same  di- 
rection, until  the  fair  body  of  religion,  revealed  in  almost 
naked  purity  by  the  prophets,  is  once  more  hidden  under  a 
new  accumulation  of  dogmas  and  of  ritual  practices  of  which 
the  primitive  Nazarene  knew  nothing ;  and  which  he  would 
probably  have  regarded  as  blasphemous  if  he  could  have  been 
made  to  understand  them. 

As,  century  after  century,  the  ages  roll  on,  polytheism 
comes  back  under  the  disguise  of  Mariolatry  and  the  adora- 
tion of  saints ;  image- worship  becomes  as  rampant  as  in  old 
Egypt ;  adoration  of  relics  takes  the  place  of  the  old  fetich- 
worship  ;  the  virtues  of  the  ephod  pale  before  those  of  holy 
coats  and  handkerchiefs ;  shrines  and  calvaries  make  up  for 
the  loss  of  the  ark  and  of  the  high  places ;  and  even  the  lus- 
tral  fluid  of  paganism  is  replaced  by  holy  water  at  the  porches 

*  I  am  not  unaware  of  the  existence  of  many  and  widely  divergent 
sects  and  schools  among  the  Jews  at  all  periods  of  their  history,  since 
the  dispersion.  But  I  imagine  that  orthodox  Judaism  is  now  pretty 
much  what  it  was  in  Philo's  time ;  while  Peter  and  Paul,  if  they  could 
return  to  life,  would  certainly  have  to  learn  the  catechism  of  either  the 
Roman,  Greek,  or  Anglican  Churches,  if  they  desired  to  be  considered 
orthodox  Christians. 


160  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  the  temples.  A  touching  ceremony — the  common  meal 
originally  eaten  in  pious  memory  of  a  loved  teacher — was 
metamorphosed  into  a  flesh-and-blood  sacrifice,  supposed  to 
possess  exactly  that  redeeming  virtue  which  the  prophets 
denied  to  the  flesh-and-blood  sacrifices  of  their  day;  while 
the  minute  observance  of  ritual  was  raised  to  a  degree  of 
punctilious  refinement  which  Levitical  legislators  might  envy. 
And  with  the  growth  of  this  theology,  grew  its  inevitable 
concomitant,  the  belief  in  evil  spirits,  in  possession,  in 
sorcery,  in  charms  and  omens,  until  the  Christians  of  the 
twelfth  century  after  our  era  were  sunk  in  more  debased  and 
brutal  superstitions  than  are  recorded  of  the  Israelites  in  the 
twelfth  century  before  it. 

The  greatest  men  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  unable  to  escape 
the  infection.  Dante's  "  Inferno  "  would  be  revolting  if  it 
were  not  so  often  sublime,  so  often  exquisitely  tender.  The 
hideous  pictures  which  cover  a  vast  space  on  the  south  wall 
of  the  Campo  Santo  of  Pisa  convey  information,  as  terrible 
as  it  is  indisputable,  of  the  theological  conceptions  of  Dante's 
countrymen  in  the  fourteenth  century,  whose  eyes  were 
addressed  by  the  painters  of  those  disgusting  scenes,  and 
whose  approbation  they  knew  how  to  win.  A  candid  Mexi- 
can of  the  time  of  Cortez,  could  he  have  seen  this  Christian 
burial-place,  would  have  taken  it  for  an  appropriately  adorned 
Teocalli.  The  professed  disciple  of  the  God  of  justice  and  of 
mercy  might  there  gloat  over  the  sufferings  of  his  fellow-men 
depicted  as  undergoing  every  extremity  of  atrocious  and- 
sanguinary  torture  to  all  eternity,  for  theological  errors  no 
less  than  for  moral  delinquencies ;  while,  in  the  central  fig- 
ure of  Satan,*  occupied  in  champing  up  souls  in  his  capri- 

*  Dante's  description  of  Lucifer  engaged  in  the  eternal  mastication 
of  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  Judas  Iscariot — 

"  Da  ogni  bocca  dirompea  co'  denti 
Un  peccatore,  a  guisa  di  maciulla, 
Si  che  tre  ne  f acea  cosi  dolenti. 
A  quel  dinanzi  il  mordere  era  nulla 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THEOLOGY.  161 

cions  and  well-toothed  jaws,  to  void  them  again  for  the  pur- 
pose of  undergoing  fresh  suffering,  we  have  the  counterpart  of 
the  strange  Polynesian  and  Egyption  dogma  that  there  were 
certain  gods  who  employed  themselves  in  devouring  the 
ghostly  flesh  of  the  spirits  of  the  dead.  But,  in  justice  to 
the  Polynesians,  it  must  be  recollected  that,  after  three  such 
operations,  they  thought  the  soul  was  purified  and  happy. 
In  the  view  of  the  Christian  theologian  the  operation  was 
only  a  preparation  for  new  tortures  continued  for  ever  and 
aye. 

With  the  growth  of  civilization  in  Europe,  and  with  the 
revival  of  letters  and  of  science  in  the  fourteenth  and  fif- 
teenth centuries,  the  ethical  and  intellectual  criticism  of 
theology  once  more  recommenced,  and  arrived  at  a  tempo- 
rary resting-place  in  the  confessions  of  the  various  reformed 
Protestant  sects  in  the  sixteenth  century;  almost  all  of 
which,  as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough,  began  to  perse- 
cute those  who  carried  criticism  beyond  their  own  limit. 
But  the  movement  was  not  arrested  by  these  ecclesiastical 
barriers,  as  their  constructors  fondly  imagined  it  would  be ; 
it  was  continued,  tacitly  or  openly,  by  Galileo,  by  Hobbes,  by 
Descartes,  and  especially  by  Spinoza,  in  the  seventeenth 
century ;  by  the  English  Freethinkers,  by  Eousseau,  by  the 
French  Encyclopaedists,  and  by  the  German  Eationalists, 
among  whom  Lessing  stands  out  a  head  and  shoulders  taller 
than  the  rest,  throughout  the  eighteenth  century ;  by  the 
historians,  the  philologers,  the  Biblical  critics,  the  geologists, 
and  the  biologists  in  the  nineteenth  century,  until  it  is  ob- 
vious to  all  who  can  see  that  the  moral  sense  and  the  really 
scientific  method  of  seeking  for  truth  are  once  more  pre- 
dominating over  false  science.  Once  more  ethics  and  theol- 
ogy are  parting  company. 

Verso  '1  graffiar,  che  tal  volta  la  schiena 
Rimanea  della  pelle  tutta  brulla  " — 
is  quite  in  harmony  with  the  Pisan  picture  and  perfectly  Polynesian  in 

conception. 

8 


162  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

It  is  my  conviction  that,  with  the  spread  of  true  scientific 
culture,  whatever  may  be  the  medium,  historical,  philologi- 
cal, philosophical,  or  physical,  through  which  that  culture  is 
conveyed,  and  with  its  necessary  concomitant,  a  constant 
elevation  of  the  standard  of  veracity,  the  end  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  theology  will  be  like  its  beginning — it  will  cease  to 
have  any  relation  to  ethics.  I  suppose  that,  so  long  as  the 
human  mind  exists,  it  will  not  escape  its  deep-seated  instinct 
to  personify  its  intellectual  conceptions.  The  science  of  the 
present  day  is  as  full  of  this  particular  form  of  intellectual 
shadow-worship  as  is  the  nescience  of  ignorant  ages.  The 
difference  is  that  the  philosopher  who  is  worthy  of  the  name 
knows  that  his  personified  hypotheses,  such  as  law,  and  force, 
and  ether,  and  the  like,  are  merely  useful  symbols,  while  the 
ignoraut  and  the  careless  take  them  for  adequate  expressions 
of  reality.  So,  it  may  be,  that  the  majority  of  mankind  may 
find  the  practice  of  morality  made  easier  by  the  use  of  theo- 
logical symbols.  And  unless  these  are  converted  from  sym- 
bols into  idols,  I  do  not  see  that  science  has  anything  to  say 
to  the  practice,  except  to  give  an  occasional  warning  of  its 
dangers.  But,  when  such  symbols  are  dealt  with  as  real  ex- 
istences, I  think  the  highest  duty  which  is  laid  upon  men  of 
science  is  to  show  that  these  dogmatic  idols  have  no  greater 
value  than  the  fabrications  of  men's  hands,  the  stocks  and 
the  stones,  which  they  have  replaced. 


V. 

SCIENCE  AND  MORALS. 

In  spite  of  long  and,  perhaps,  not  unjustifiable  hesitation, 
I  begin  to  think  that  there  must  be  something  in  telepathy. 
For  evidence,  which  I  may  not  disregard,  is  furnished  by  the 
last  number  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  that,  among  the  hith- 
erto undiscovered  endowments  of  the  human  species,  there 
may  be  a  power  even  more  wonderful  than  the  mystic  faculty 
by  which  the  esoterically  Buddhistic  sage  "  upon  the  farthest 
mountain  in  Cathay  "  reads  the  inmost  thoughts  of  a  dweller 
within  the  homely  circuit  of  the  London  postal  district. 
Great  indeed  is  the  insight  of  such  a  seer ;  but  how  much 
greater  is  his  who  combines  the  feat  of  reading,  not  merely 
the  thoughts  of  which  the  thinker  is  aware,  but  those  of 
which  he  knows  nothing ;  who  sees  him  unconsciously  draw- 
ing the  conclusions  which  he  repudiates,  and  supporting  the 
doctrines  which  he  detests.  To  reflect  upon  the  confusion 
which  the  working  of  such  a  power  as  this  may  introduce 
into  one's  ideas  of  personality  and  responsibility  is  perilous — 
madness  lies  that  way.  But  truth  is  truth,  and  I  am  almost 
fain  to  believe  in  this  magical  visibility  of  the  non-existent 
when  the  only  alternative  is  the  supposition  that  the  writer 
of  the  article  on  "  Materialism  and  Morality  "  in  the  current 
number  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  in  spite  of  his  manifest 
ability  and  honesty,  has  pledged  himself,  so  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, to  what,  if  I  may  trust  my  own  knowledge  of  my 
own  thoughts,  must  be  called  a  multitude  of  errors  of  the 
first  magnitude. 


164  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

I  so  much  admire  Mr.  Lilly's  outspokenness,  I  am  so  com- 
pletely satisfied  of  the  uprightness  of  his  intentions,  that  it  is 
repugnant  to  me  to  quarrel  with  anything  he  may  say  ;  and 
I  sympathize  so  warmly  with  his  manly  scorn  of  the  vileness 
of  much  that  passes  under  the  name  of  literature  in  these 
times,  that  I  would  willingly  be  silent  under  his  by  no  means 
unkindly  exposition  of  his  theory  of  my  own  tenets,  if  I 
thought  that  such  personal  abnegation  would  serve  the  in- 
terest of  the  cause  we  both  have  at  heart.  But  I  can  not 
think  so.  My  creed  may  be  an  ill-favored  thing,  but  it  is 
mine  own,  as  Touchstone  says  of  his  lady-love ;  and  I  have 
so  high  an  opinion  of  the  solid  virtues  of  the  object  of  my 
affections  that  I  can  not  calmly  see  her  personated  by  a 
wench  who  is  much  uglier  and  has  no  virtue  worth  speaking 
of.  I  hope  I  should  be  ready  to  stand  by  a  falling  cause  if 
I  had  ever  adopted  it ;  but  suffering  for  a  falling  cause, 
which  one  has  done  one's  best  to  bring  to  the  ground,  is  a 
kind  of  martyrdom  for  which  I  have  no  taste.  In  my  opin- 
ion, the  philosophical  theory  which  Mr.  Lilly  attributes  to 
me — but  which  I  have  over  and  over  again  disclaimed — is 
untenable  and  destined  to  extinction ;  and  I  not  unreason- 
ably demur  to  being  counted  among  its  defenders. 

After  the  manner  of  a  mediaeval  disputant,  Mr.  Lilly 
posts  up  three  theses,  which,  as  he  conceives,  embody  the  chief 
heresies  propagated  by  the  late  Professor  Clifford,  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer,  and  myself.  He  says  that  we  agree  "  (1)  in 
putting  aside,  as  unverifiable,  everything  which  the  senses 
can  not  verify ;  (2)  everything  beyond  the  bounds  of  physi- 
cal science  ;  (3)  everything  which  can  not  be  brought  into  a 
laboratory  and  dealt  with  chemically"  (p.  578). 

My  lamented  young  friend  Clifford,  sweetest  of  natures 
though  keenest  of  disputants,  is  out  of  reach  of  our  little 
controversies,  but  his  works  speak  for  him,  and  those  who 
run  may  read  a  refutation  pf  Mr.  Lilly's  assertions  in  them. 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  hitherto,  has  shown  no  lack  either  of 
ability  or  of  inclination  to  speak  for  himself ;  and  it  would 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  165 

be  a  superfluity,  not  to  say  an  impertinence,  on  my  part,  to 
take  up  the  cudgels  for  him.  But,  for  myself,  if  my  knowl- 
edge of  my  own  consciousness  may  be  assumed  to  be  adequate 
(and  I  make  not  the  least  pretension  to  acquaintance  with 
what  goes  on  in  my  "  Unbewusstsein  "),  I  may  be  permitted 
to  observe  that  the  first  proposition  appears  to  me  to  be  not 
true ;  that  the  second  is  in  the  same  case ;  and  that,  if  there 
be  gradations  in  untrueness,  the  third  is  so  monstrously  un- 
true that  it  hovers  on  the  verge  of  absurdity,  even  if  it  does 
not  actually  flounder  in  that  logical  limbo.  Thus,  to  all 
three  theses,  I  reply  in  appropriate  fashion,  Nego — I  say  No ; 
and  I  proceed  to  state  the  grounds  of  that  negation,  which 
the  proprieties  do  not  permit  me  to  make  quite  so  emphatic 
as  I  could  desire. 

Let  me  begin  with  the  first  assertion,  that  I  "  put  aside, 
as  unverifiable,  everything  which  the  senses  can  not  verify." 
Can  such  a  statement  as  this  be  seriously  made  in  respect  of 
any  human  being?  But  I  am  not  appointed  apologist  for 
mankind  in  general ;  and  confining  my  observations  to  my- 
self, I  beg  leave  to  point  out  that,  at  this  present  moment,  I 
entertain  an  unshakable  conviction  that  Mr.  Lilly  is  the  vic- 
tim of  a  patent  and  enormous  misunderstanding,  and  that  I 
have  not  the  slightest  intention  of  putting  that  conviction 
aside  because  I  can  not  "  verify  "  it  either  by  touch,  or  taste, 
or  smell,  or  hearing,  or  sight,  which  (in  the  absence  of  any 
trace  of  telepathic  faculty)  make  up  the  totality  of  my  senses. 

Again,  I  may  venture  to  admire  the  clear  and  vigorous 
English  in  which  Mr.  Lilly  embodies  his  views :  but  the 
source  of  that  admiration  does  not  lie  in  anything  which  my 
five  senses  enable  me  to  discover  in  the  pages  of  his  article, 
and  of  which  an  orang-outang  might  be  just  as  acutely  sensi- 
ble. No,  it  lies  in  an  appreciation  of  literary  form  and  logi- 
cal structure  by  aesthetic  and  intellectual  faculties  which  are 
not  senses,  and  which  are  not  unfrequently  sadly  wanting 
where  the  senses  are  in  full  vigor.  My  poor  relation  may 
beat  me  in  the  matter  of  sensation ;  but  I  am  quite  confident 


166  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

that,  when  style  and  syllogisms  are  to  be  dealt  with,  he  is 
nowhere. 

If  there  is  anything  in  the  world  which  I  do  firmly  believe 
in,  it  is  the  universal  validity  of  the  law  of  causation ;  but 
that  universality  can  not  be  proved  by  any  amount  of  experi- 
ence, let  alone  that  which  comes  to  us  through  the  senses. 
And  when  an  effort  of  volition  changes  the  current  of  my 
thoughts,  or  when  an  idea  calls  up  another  associated  idea,  I 
have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  process  to  which  the 
first  of  the  phenomena,  in  each  case,  is  due  stands  in  relation  of 
cause  to  the  second.  Yet  the  attempt  to  verify  this  belief 
by  sensation  would  be  sheer  lunacy.  Now  I  am  quite  sure 
that  Mr.  Lilly  does  not  doubt  my  sanity ;  and  the  only  al- 
ternative seems  to  be  the  admission  that  his  first  proposition 
is  erroneous. 

The  second  thesis  charges  me  with  putting  aside  M  as  un- 
verifiable "  "  everything  beyond  the  bounds  of  physical 
science."  Again  I  say,  No.  Nobody,  I  imagine,  will  credit 
me  with  a  desire  to  limit  the  empire  of  physical  science,  but 
I  really  feel  bound  to  confess  that  a  great  many  very  familiar 
and,  at  the  same  time,  extremely  important  phenomena  lie  quite 
beyond  its  legitimate  limits.  I  can  not  conceive,  for  ex- 
ample, how  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  as  such  and 
apart  from  the  physical  process  by  which  they  are  called  into 
existence,  are  to  be  brought  within  the  bounds  of  physical 
science,  Take  the  simplest  possible  example,  the  feeling  of 
redness.  Physical  science  tells  us  that  it  commonly  arises  as 
a  consequence  of  molecular  changes  propagated  from  the  eve 
to  a  certain  part  of  the  substance  of  the  brain,  when  vibra- 
tions of  the  luminiferous  ether  of  a  certain  character  fall 
upon  the  retina.  Let  us  suppose  the  process  of  physical 
analysis  pushed  so  far  that  one  could  view  the  last  link  of 
this  chaiu  of  molecules,  watch  their  movements  as  if  they 
were  billiard  balls,  weigh  them,  measure  them,  and  know  all 
that  is  physically  knowable  about  them.  Well,  even  in  that  case, 
we  should  be  just  as  far  from  being  able  to  include  the  resulting 


SCIENCE   AND   MORALS.  167 

phenomenon  of  consciousness,  the  feel  of  redness,  within  the 
bounds  of  physical  science,  as  we  are  at  present.  It  would 
remain  as  unlike  the  phenomena  we  know  under  the  names 
of  matter  and  motion  as  it  is  now.  If  there  is  any  plain 
truth  upon  which  I  have  made  it  my  business  to  insist  over 
and  over  again  it  is  this — and  whether  it  is  a  truth  or  not,  my 
insistence  upon  it  leaves  not  a  shadow  of  justification  for  Mr. 
Lilly's  assertion. 

But  I  ask  in  this  case  also,  how  is  it  conceivable  that  any 
man,  in  possession  of  all  his  natural  faculties,  should  hold 
such  an  opinion  ?  I  do  not  suppose  that  I  am  exception- 
ally endowed  because  I  have  all  my  life  enjoyed  a  keen  per- 
ception of  the  beauty  offered  us  by  nature  and  by  art.  Now 
physical  science  may  and  probably  will,  some  day,  enable  our 
posterity  to  set  forth  the  exact  physical  concomitants  and 
conditions  of  the  strange  rapture  of  beauty,  but  if  ever  that 
day  arrives,  the  rapture  will  remain,  just  as  it  is  now,  outside 
and  beyond  the  physical  world  ;  and,  even  in  the  mental 
world,  something  superadded  to  mere  sensation.  I  do  not 
wish  to  crow  unduly  over  my  humble  cousin  the  orang,  but 
in  the  aesthetic  province,  as  in  that  of  the  intellect,  I  am 
afraid  he  is  nowhere.  I  doubt  not  he  would  detect  a  fruit 
amid  a  wilderness  of  leaves  where  I  could  see  nothing  ;  but 
I  am  tolerably  confident  that  he  has  never  been  awestruck, 
as  I  have  been,  by  the  dim  religious  gloom,  as  of  a  temple 
devoted  to  the  earthgods,  of  the  tropical  forest  which  he  in- 
habits. Yet  I  doubt  not  that  our  poor  long-armed  and 
short-legged  friend,  as  he  sits  meditatively  munching  his 
durian  fruit,  has  something  behind  that  sad  Socratic  face  of 
his  which  is  utterly"  beyond  the  bounds  of  physical  science." 
Physical  science  may  know  all  about  his  clutching  the  fruit 
and  munching  it  and  digesting  it,  and  how  the  physical  titil- 
lation  of  his  palate  is  transmitted  to  some  microscopic  cells 
of  the  gray  matter  of  his  brain.  But  the  feelings  of  sweet- 
ness and  of  satisfaction  which,  for  a  moment,  hang  out  their 
signal  lights  in  his  melancholy  eyes,  are  as  utterly  outside  the 


168  CONTKO VERTED  QUESTIONS. 

bounds  of  physics  as  is  the  "  fine  frenzy  "  of  a  human  rhap- 
sodist. 

Does  Mr.  Lilly  really  believe  that,  putting  me  aside,  there 
is  any  man  with  the  feeling  of  music  in  him  who  disbelieves 
in  the  reality  of  the  delight  which  he  derives  from  it,  because 
that  delight  lies  outside  the  bounds  of  physical  science,  not 
less  than  outside  the  region  of  the  mere  sense  of  hearing  ? 
But,  it  may  be,  that  he  includes  music,  painting,  and  sculpt- 
ure under  the  head  of  physical  science,  and  in  that  case  I 
can  only  regret  I  am  unable  to  follow  him  in  his  ennoblement 
of  my  favorite  pursuits. 

The  third  thesis  runs  that  I  put  aside  "  as  unverifiable  " 
"  everything  which  can  not  be  brought  into  a  laboratory  and 
dealt  with  chemically";  and,  once  more  I  say,  No.  This 
wondrous  allegation  is  no  novelty ;  it  has  not  unfrequently 
reached  me  from  that  region  where  gentle  (or  ungentle)  dull- 
ness so  often  holds  unchecked  sway — the  pulpit.  But  I  mar- 
vel to  find  that  a  writer  of  Mr.  Lilly's  intelligence  and  good 
faith  is  willing  to  father  such  a  wastrel.  If  I  am  to  deal 
with  the  thing  seriously,  I  find  myself  met  by  one  of  the  two 
horns  of  a  dilemma.  Either  some  meaning,  as  unknown  to 
usage  as  to  the  dictionaries,  attaches  to  "  laboratory  "  and 
"  chemical,"  or  the  proposition  is  (what  am  I  to  say  in  my 
sore  need  for  a  gentle  and  yet  appropriate  word  ?) — well — 
unhistorical. 

Does  Mr.  Lilly  suppose  that  I  put  aside  as  "  unverifiable  " 
all  the  truths  of  mathematics,  of  philology,  of  history  ?  And 
if  I  do  not,  will  he  have  the  great  goodness  to  say  how  the 
binomial  theorem  is  to  be  dealt  with  "  chemically,"  even  in 
the  best  appointed  "  laboratory  "  ;  or  where  the  balances  and 
crucibles  are  kept  by  which  the  various  theories  of  the  nature 
of  the  Basque  language  may  be  tested ;  or  what  reagents  will 
extract  the  truth  from  any  given  History  of  Rome,  and  leave 
the  errors  behind  as  a  residual  calx  ? 

I  really  can  not  answer  these  questions,  and  unless  Mr. 
Lilly  can,  I  think  he  would  do  well  hereafter  to  think  more 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  169 

than  twice  before  attributing  such  preposterous  notions  to 
his  fellow-men,  who,  after  all,  as  a  learned  counsel  said,  are 
vertebrated  animals. 

The  whole  thing  perplexes  me  much  ;  and  I  am  sure 
there  must  be  an  explanation  which  will  leave  Mr.  Lilly's 
reputation  for  common  sense  and  fair  dealing  untouched. 
Can  it  be — I  put  this  forward  quite  tentatively — that  Mr. 
Lilly  is  the  victim  of  a  confusion,  common  enough  among 
thoughtless  people,  and  into  which  he  has  fallen  unawares? 
Obviously,  it  is  one  thing  to  say  that  the  logical  methods  of 
physical  science  are  of  universal  applicability,  and  quite 
another  to  affirm  that  all  subjects  of  thought  lie  within  the 
province  of  physical  science.  I  have  often  declared  my  con- 
viction that  there  is  only  one  method  by  which  intellectual 
truth  can  be  reached,  whether  the  subject-matter  of  investi- 
gation belongs  to  the  world  of  physics  or  to  the  world  of  con- 
sciousness ;  and  one  of  the  arguments  in  favor  of  the  use  of 
physical  science  as  an  instrument  of  education  which  I  have 
of  tenest  used  is  that,  in  my  opinion,  it  exercises  young  minds 
in  the  appreciation  of  inductive  evidence  better  than  any  other 
study.  But  while  I  repeat  my  conviction  that  the  physical 
sciences  probably  furnish  the  best  and  most  easily  appreciable 
illustrations  of  the  one  and  invisible  mode  of  ascertaining 
truth  by  the  use  of  reason,  I  beg  leave  to  add  that  I  have 
never  thought  of  suggesting  that  other  branches  of  knowl- 
edge may  not  afford  the  same  discipline  ;  and  assuredly  I 
have  never  given  the  slightest  ground  for  the  attribution  to 
me  of  the  ridiculous  contention  that  there  is  nothing  true 
outside  the  bounds  of  physical  science.  Doubtless  people 
who  wanted  to  say  something  damaging,  without  too  nice  a 
regard  to  its  truth  or  falsehood,  have  often  enough  misrepre- 
sented my  plain  meaning.  But  Mr.  Lilly  is  not  one  of  these 
folks  at  whom  one  looks  and  passes  by,  and  I  can  but  sorrow- 
fully wonder  at  finding  him  in  such  company. 

So  much  for  the  three  theses  which  Mr.  Lilly  has  nailed 
on  to  a  page  of  this  Review.     I  think  I  have  shown  that  the 


170  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

first  is  inaccurate,  that  the  second  is  inaccurate,  and  that  the 
third  is  inaccurate ;  and  that  these  three  inaccurates  consti- 
tute one  prodigious,  though  I  doubt  not  unintentional,  mis- 
representation. If  Mr.  Lilly  and  I  were  dialectic  gladiators, 
fighting  in  the  arena  of  the  Fortnightly^  under  the  eye  of  an 
editorial  lanista,  for  the  delectation  of  the  public,  my  best 
tactics  would  now  be  to  leave  the  field  of  battle.  For  the 
question  whether  I  do,  or  do  not,  hold  certain  opinions  is  a 
matter  of  fact,  with  regard  to  which  my  evidence  is  likely  to 
be  regarded  as  conclusive — at  least  until  such  time  as  the 
telepathy  of  the  unconscious  is  more  generally  recognized. 

However,  some  other  assertions  are  made  by  Mr.  Lilly 
which  more  or  less  involve  matters  of  opinion  whereof  the 
rights  and  wrongs  are  less  easily  settled,  but  in  respect  of 
which  he  seems  to  me  to  err  quite  as  seriously  as  about  the 
topics  we  have  been  hitherto  discussing.  And  the  importance 
of  these  subjects  leads  me  to  venture  upon  saying  something 
about  them,  even  though  I  am  thereby  compelled  to  leave  the 
safe  ground  of  personal  knowledge. 

Before  launching  the  three  torpedoes  which  have  so  sadly 
exploded  on  board  his  own  ship,  Mr.  Lilly  says  that  with 
whatever  "  rhetorical  ornaments  I  may  gild  my  teaching,"  it 
is  "  Materialism."  Let  me  observe,  in  passing,  that  rhetor- 
ical ornament  is  not  in  my  way,  and  that  gilding  refined  gold 
would,  to  my  mind,  be  less  objectionable  than  varnishing  the 
fair  face  of  truth  with  that  pestilent  cosmetic,  rhetoric.  If  I 
believed  that  I  had  any  claim  to  the  title  of  "  Materialist,"  as 
that  term  is  understood  in  the  language  of  philosophy  and 
not  in  that  of  abuse,  I  should  not  attempt  to  hide  it  by  any 
sort  of  gilding.  I  have  not  found  reason  to  care  much  for 
hard  names  in  the  course  of  the  last  thirty  years,  and  I  am 
too  old  to  develop  a  new  sensitiveness.  But,  to  repeat  what 
I  have  more  than  once  taken  pains  to  say  in  the  most  un- 
adorned of  plain  language,  I  repudiate,  as  philosophical 
error,  the  doctrine  of  Materialism  as  I  understand  it,  just  as 
I  repudiate  the  doctrine  of  Spiritualism  as  Mr.  Lilly  presents 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  171 

it,  and  my  reason  for  thus  doing  is,  in  both  cases,  the  same  ; 
namely,  that,  whatever  their  differences,  Materialists  and 
Spiritualists  agree  in  making  very  positive  assertions  about 
matters  of  which  I  am  certain  I  know  nothing,  and  about 
which  I  believe  they  are,  in  truth,  just  as  ignorant.  And 
further,  that,  even  when  their  assertions  are  confined  to 
topics  which  lie  within  the  range  of  my  faculties,  they  often 
appear  to  me  to  be  in  the  wrong.  And  there  is  yet  another 
reason  for  objecting  to  be  identified  with  either  of  these 
sects ;  and  that  is  that  each  is  extremely  fond  of  attributing 
to  the  other,  by  way  of  reproach,  conclusions  which  are  the 
property  of  neither,  though  they  infallibly  flow  from  the  log- 
ical development  of  the  first  principles  of  both.  Surely  a 
prudent  man  is  not  to  be  reproached  because  he  keeps  clear 
of  the  squabbles  of  these  philosophical  Bianchi  and  Neri,  by 
refusing  to  have  anything  to  do  with  either  ? 

I  understand  the  main  tenet  of  Materialism  to  be  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  universe  but  matter  and  force ;  and 
that  all  the  phenomena  of  nature  are  explicable  by  deduc- 
tion from  the  properties  assignable  to  these  two  primitive 
factors.  That  great  champion  of  Materialism  whom  Mr. 
Lilly  appears  to  consider  to  be  an  authority  in  physical 
science,  Dr.  Buchner,  embodies  this  article  of  faith  on  hi3 
title-page.  Kraft  und  Stoff — force  and  matter — are  paraded 
as  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  existence.  This  I  apprehend  is 
the  fundamental  article  of  the  faith  materialistic ;  and  who- 
soever does  not  hold  it  is  condemned  by  the  more  zealous  of 
the  persuasion  (as  I  have  some  reason  to  know)  to  the  In- 
ferno appointed  for  fools  or  hypocrites.  But  all  this  I 
heartily  disbelieve ;  and  at  the  risk  of  being  charged  with 
wearisome  repetition  of  an  old  story  I  will  briefly  give  my 
reasons  for  persisting  in  my  infidelity.  In  the  first  place,  as 
I  have  already  hinted,  it  seems  to  me  pretty  plain  that  there 
is  a  third  thing  in  the  universe,  to  wit,  consciousness,  which, 
in  the  hardness  of  my  heart  or  head,  I  can  not  see  to  be  mat- 
ter or  force,  or  any  conceivable  modification  of  either,  how- 


172  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ever  intimately  the  manifestations  of  the  phenomena  of  con- 
sciousness may  be  connected  with  the  phenomena  known  as 
matter  and  force.  In  the  second  place,  the  arguments  used 
by  Descartes  and  Berkeley  to  show  that  our  certain  knowl- 
edge does  not  extend  beyond  our  states  of  consciousness,  ap- 
pear to  me  to  be  as  irrefragable  now  as  they  did  when  I  first 
became  acquainted  with  them  some  half  century  ago.  All 
the  materialistic  writers  I  know  of  who  have  tried  to  bite 
that  file  have  simply  broken  their  teeth.  But,  if  this  is  true, 
our  one  certainty  is  the  existence  of  the  mental  world,  and 
that  of  Kraft  unci  Staff  falls  into  the  rank  of,  at  best,  a 
highly  probable  hypothesis. 

Thirdly,  when  I  was  a  mere  boy,  with  a  perverse  tendency 
to  think  when  I  ought  to  have  been  playing,  my  mind  was 
greatly  exercised  by  this  formidable  problem,  What  would 
become  of  things  if  they  lost  their  qualities  ?  As  the  qualities 
had  no  objective  existence,  and  the  thing  without  qualities 
was  nothing,  the  solid  world  seemed  whittled  away — to  my 
great  horror.  As  I  grew  older,  and  learned  to  use  the  terms 
matter  and  force,  the  boyish  problem  was  revived,  mutato 
nomine.  On  the  one  hand,  the  notion  of  matter  without 
force  seemed  to  resolve  the  world  into  a  set  of  geometrical 
ghosts,  too  dead  even  to  jabber.  On  the  other  hand, 
Boscovich's  hypothesis,  by  which  matter  was  resolved  into 
centers  of  force,  was  very  attrative.  But  when  one  tried  to 
think  it  out,  what  in  the  world  became  of  force  considered 
as  an  objective  entity  ?  Force,  even  the  most  materialistic  of 
philosophers  will  agree  with  the  most  idealistic,  is  nothing 
but  a  name  for  the  cause  of  motion.  And  if,  with  Boscovich, 
I  resolved  things  into  centers  of  force,  then  matter  vanished 
altogether  and  left  immaterial  entities  in  its  place.  One 
might  as  well  frankly  accept  Idealism  and  have  done  with  it. 

I  must  make  a  confession,  even  if  it  be  humiliating.  I 
have  never  been  able  to  form  the  slightest  conception  of 
those  "forces"  which  the  Materialists  talk  about,  as  if  they 
had  samples  of  them  many  years  in  bottle.     They  tell  me 


SCIENCE  AND   MORALS.  173 

that  matter  consists  of  atoms,  which  are  separated  by  mere 
space  devoid  of  contents ;  and  that,  through  this  void,  radiate 
the  attractive  and  repulsive  forces  whereby  the  atoms  affect 
one  another.  If  anybody  can  clearly  conceive  the  nature  of 
these  things  which  not  only  exist  in  nothingness,  but  pull 
and  push  there  with  great  vigor,  I  envy  him  for  the  posses- 
sion of  an  intellect  of  larger  grasp,  not  only  than  mine,  but 
than  that  of  Leibnitz  or  of  Newton*  To  me  the  " chimaera, 
bombinans  in  vacuo  quia  comedit  secundas  intentiones  "  of 
the  schoolmen  is  a  familar  and  domestic  creature  compared 
with  such  "  forces."  Besides,  by  the  hypothesis,  the  forces 
are  not  matter ;  and  thus  all  that  is  of  any  particular  conse- 
quence in  the  world  turns  out  to  be  not  matter  on  the 
Materialist's  own  showing.  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  I  am 
casting  a  doubt  upon  the  propriety  of  the  employment  of  the 
terms  "  atom  "  and  "  force,"  as  they  stand  among  the  work- 
ing hypotheses  of  physical  science.  As  formulae  which  can 
be  applied,  with  perfect  precision  and  great  convenience,  in 
the  interpretation  of  nature,  their  value  is  incalculable; 
but,  as  real  entities,  having  an  objective  existence,  an  in- 
divisible particle  which  nevertheless  occupies  space,  is  surely 
inconceivable;  and  with  respect  to  the  operation  of  that 
atom,  where  it  is  not,  by  the  aid  of  a  "  force  "  resident  in 
nothingness,  I  am  as  little  able  to  imagine  it  as  I  fancy  any 
one  else  is. 

Unless  and  until  anybody  will  resolve  all  these  doubts 
and  difficulties  for  me,  I  think  I  have  a  right  to  hold  aloof 
from  Materialism.  As  to  Spiritualism,  it  lands  me  in  even 
greater  difficulties  when  I  want  to  get  change  for  its  notes- 


*  See  the  famous  Collection  of  Papers,  published  by  Clarke  in  1717. 
Leibnitz  says :  "  'Tis  also  a  supernatural  thing  that  bodies  should 
attract  one  another  at  a  distance  without  any  intermediate  means." 
And  Clarke,  on  behalf  of  Newton,  caps  this  as  follows :  "  That  one 
body  should  attract  another  without  any  intermediate  means  is,  indeed, 
not  a  miracle,  but  a  contradiction  ;  for  'tis  supposing  something  to  act 
where  it  is  not." 


174  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of-hand  in  the  solid  coin  of  reality.  For  the  assumed 
substantial  entity,  spirit,  which  is  supposed  to  underlie  the 
phenomena  of  consciousness,  as  matter  underlies  those  of 
physical  nature,  leaves  not  even  a  geometrical  ghost  when 
these  phenomena  are  abstracted.  And,  even  if  we  suppose 
the  existence  of  such  an  entity  apart  from  qualities — that  is 
to  say,  a  bare  existence — for  mind ;  how  does  anybody  know 
that  it  differs  from  that  other  entity,  apart  from  qualities, 
which  is  the  supposed  substratum  of  matter?  Spiritualism 
is,  after  all,  little  better  than  Materialism  turned  upside 
down.  And  if  I  try  to  think  of  the  "  spirit  "  which  a  man, 
by  this  hypothesis,  carries  about  under  his  hat,  as  something 
devoid  of  relation  to  space,  and  as  something  indivisible, 
even  in  thought ;  while  it  is,  at  the  same  time,  supposed  to 
be  in  that  place  and  to  be  possessed  of  half  a  dozen  different 
faculties,  I  confess  I  get  quite  lost. 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  if  I  were  forced  to  choose  be- 
tween Materialism  and  Idealism,  I  should  elect  for  the  latter  ; 
and  I  certainly  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  effete 
mythology  of  Spiritualism.  But  I  am  not  aware  that  I  am 
under  any  compulsion  to  choose  either  the  one  or  the  other. 
I  have  always  entertained  a  strong  suspicion  that  the  sage 
who  maintained  that  man  is  the  measure  of  the  universe  was 
sadly  in  the  wrong;  and  age  and  experience  have  not 
weakened  that  conviction.  In  following  these  lines  of  specu- 
lation I  am  reminded  of  the  quarter-deck  walks  of  my  youth. 
In  taking  that  form  of  exercise  you  may  perambulate  through 
all  points  of  the  compass  with  perfect  safety,  so  long  as  you 
keep  within  certain  limits  :  forget  those  limits,  in  your  ardor, 
and  mere  smothering  and  spluttering,  if  not  worse,  await  you. 
I  stick  by  the  deck  and  throw  a  life-buoy  now  and  then  to 
the  struggling  folk  who  have  gone  over-board  ;  and  all  I  get 
for  my  humanity  is  the  abuse  of  all  whenever  they  leave  off 
abusing  one  another. 

Tolerably  early  in  life  I  discovered  that  one  of  the  un- 
pardonable sins,  in  the  eyes  of  most  people,  is  for  a  man  to 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  175 

presume  to  go  about  unlabeled.  The  world  regards  such  a 
person  as  the  police  do  an  unmuzzled  dog,  not  under  proper 
control.  I  could  find  no  label  that  would  suit  me,  so,  in  my 
desire  to  range  myself  and  be  respectable,  I  invented  one ; 
and,  as  the  chief  thing  I  was  sure  of  was  that  I  did  not  know 
a  great  many  things  that  the  — ists  and  the  — ites  about  me 
professed  to  be  familiar  with,  I  called  myself  an  Agnostic. 
Surely  no  denomination  could  be  more  modest  or  more 
appropriate ;  and  I  can  not  imagine  why  I  should  be  every 
now  and  then  haled  out  of  my  refuge  and  declared  sometimes 
to  be  a  Materialist,  sometimes  an  Atheist,  sometimes  a 
Positivist ;  and  sometimes,  alas  and  alack,  a  cowardly  or  re- 
actionary Obscurantist. 

I  trust  that  I  have,  at  last,  made  my  case  clear,  and  that 
henceforth  I  shall  be  allowed  to  rest  in  peace — at  least,  after 
a  further  explanation  or  two,  which  Mr.  Lilly  proves  to  me 
may  be  necessary.  It  has  been  seen  that  my  excellent  critic 
has  original  ideas  respecting  the  meaning  of  the  words 
"  laboratory  "  and  "  chemical " ;  and,  as  it  appears  to  me,  his 
definition  of  "  Materialist "  is  quite  as  much  peculiar  to  him- 
self. For,  unless  I  misunderstand  him,  and  I  have  taken 
pains  not  to  do  so,  he  puts  me  down  as  a  Materialist  (over 
and  above  the  grounds  which  I  have  shown  to  have  no 
foundation) ;  firstly,  because  I  have  said  that  consciousness 
is  a  function  of  the  brain ;  and,  secondly,  because  I  hold  by 
determinism.  With  respect  to  the  first  point,  I  am  not 
aware  that  there  is  any  one  who  doubts  that,  in  the  proper 
physiological  sense  of  the  word  function,  consciousness,  in 
certain  forms  at  any  rate,  is  a  cerebral  function.  In  physi- 
ology we  call  function  that  effect,  or  series  of  effects,  which 
results  from  the  activity  of  an  organ.  Thus,  it  is  the  func- 
tion of  muscle  to  give  rise  to  motion ;  and  the  muscle  gives 
rise  to  motion  when  the  nerve  which  supplies  it  is  stimulated. 
If  one  of  the  nerve-bundles  in  a  man's  arm  is  laid  bare  and 
a  stimulus  is  applied  to  certain  of  the  nervous  filaments,  the  re- 
sult will  be  production  of  motion  in  that  arm.     If  others  are 


176  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

stimulated,  the  result  will  be  the  production  of  the  state  of 
consciousness  called  pain.  Now,  if  I  trace  these  last  nerve-fila- 
ments, I  find  them  to  be  ultimately  connected  with  part  of 
the  substance  of  the  brain,  just  as  the  others  turn  out  to  be 
connected  with  muscular  substance.  If  the  production  of 
motion  in  the  one  case  is  properly  said  to  be  the  function  of 
the  muscular  substance,  why  is  the  production  of  a  state  of 
consciousness  in  the  other  case  not  to  be  called  a  function  of 
the  cerebral  substance  ?  Once  upon  a  time,  it  is  true,  it  was 
supposed  that  a  certain  "  animal  spirit "  resided  in  muscle 
and  was  the  real  active  agent.  But  we  have  done  with  that 
wholly  superfluous  fiction  so  far  as  the  muscular  organs  are 
concerned.  Why  are  we  to  retain  a  corresponding  fiction  for 
the  nervous  organs  ? 

If  it  is  replied  that  no  physiologist,  however  spiritual  his 
leanings,  dreams  of  supposing  that  simple  sensations  require  a 
"  spirit "  for  their  production,  then  I  must  point  out  that  we 
are  all  agreed  that  consciousness  is  a  function  of  matter,  and 
that  particular  tenet  must  be  given  up  as  a  mark  of  Material- 
ism. Any  further  argument  will  turn  upon  the  question, 
not  whether  consiousness  is  a  function  of  the  brain,  but 
whether  all  forms  of  consciousness  are  so.  Again,  I  hold  it 
would  be  quite  correct  to  say  that  material  changes  are  the 
causes  of  psychical  phenomena  (and,  as  a  consequence,  that 
the  organs  in  which  these  changes  take  place  have  the  pro- 
duction of  such  phenomena  for  their  function),  even  if  the 
spiritualistic  hypothesis  had  any  foundation.  For  nobody 
hesitates  to  say  that  an  event  A  is  the  cause  of  an  event  Z, 
even  if  there  are  as  many  intermediate  terms,  known  and 
unknown,  in  the  chain  of  causation  as  there  are  letters  be- 
tween A  and  Z.  The  man  who  pulls  the  trigger  of  a  loaded 
pistol  placed  close  to  another's  head  certainly  is  the  cause  of  that 
other's  death,  though,  in  strictness,  he  "  causes  "  nothing  but 
the  movement  of  the  finger  upon  the  trigger.  And,  in  like 
manner,  the  molecular  change  which  is  brought  about  in  a 
certain  portion  of  the  cerebral  substance  by  the  stimulation 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  177 

of  a  remote  part  of  the  body  would  be  properly  said  to  be  the 
cause  of  the  consequent  feeling,  whatever  unknown  terms 
were  interposed  between  the  physical  agent  and  the  actual 
psychical  product.  Therefore,  unless  Materialism  has  the 
monopoly  of  the  right  use  of  language,  I  see  nothing  ma- 
terialistic in  the  phraseology  which  I  have  employed. 

The  only  remaining  justification  which  Mr.  Lilly  offers 
for  dubbing  me  a  Materialist,  malgre  moi,  arises  out  of  a 
passage  which  he  quotes,  in  which  I  say  that  the  progress  of 
science  means  the  extension  of  the  province  of  what  we  call 
matter  and  force,  and  the  concomitant  gradual  banishment 
from  all  regions  of  human  thought  of  what  we  call  spirit 
and  spontaneity.  I  hold  that  opinion  now,  if  anything,  more 
firmly  than  I  did  when  I  gave  utterance  to  it  a  score  of  years 
ago,  for  it  has  been  justified  by  subsequent  events.  But 
what  that  opinion  has  to  do  with  Materialism  I  fail  to  dis- 
cover. In  my  judgment,  it  is  consistent  with  the  most 
thorough-going  Idealism,  and  the  grounds  of  that  judgment 
are  really  very  plain  and  simple. 

The  growth  of  science,  not  merely  of  physical  science,  but  of 
all  science,  means  the  demonstration  of  order  and  natural  causa- 
tion among  phenomena  which  had  not  previously  been  brought 
under  these  conceptions.  Nobody  who  is  acquainted  with 
the  progress  of  scientific  thinking  in  every  department  of 
human  knowledge,  in  the  course  of  the  last  two  centuries, 
will  be  disposed  to  deny  that  immense  provinces  have  been 
added  to  the  realm  of  science ;  or  to  doubt  that  the  next 
two  centuries  will  be  witnesses  of  a  vastly  greater  annexation. 
More  particularly  in  the  region  of  the  physiology  of  the 
nervous  system,  is  it  justifiable  to  conclude  from  the  progress 
that  has  been  made  in  analyzing  the  relations  between  ma- 
terial and  psychical  phenomena,  that  vast  further  advances 
will  be  made;  and  that,  sooner  or  later,  all  the  so-called 
spontaneous  operations  of  the  mind  will  have,  not  only  their 
relations  to  one  another,  but  their  relations  to  physical  phe- 
nomena, connected  in  natural  series  of  causes  and  effects, 


178  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

strictly  defined.  In  other  words,  while,  at  present,  we  know 
only  the  nearer  moiety  of  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  by 
which  the  phenomena  we  call  material  give  rise  to  those  which 
we  call  mental ;  hereafter,  we  shall  get  to  the  further  end 
of  the  series. 

In  my  innocence,  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  supposing 
that  this  is  merely  a  statement  of  facts,  and  that  the  good 
Bishop  Berkeley,  if  he  were  alive,  would  find  such  facts  fit 
into  his  system  without  the  least  difficulty.  That  Mr.  Lilly 
should  play  into  the  hands  of  his  foes,  by  declaring  that  un- 
mistakable facts  make  for  them,  is  an  exemplification  of  ways 
that  are  dark,  quite  unintelligible  to  me.  Surely  Mr.  Lilly 
does  not  hold  that  the  disbelief  in  spontaneity — which  term, 
if  it  has  any  meaning  at  all,  means  uncaused  action — is  a 
mark  of  the  beast  Materialism  ?  If  so,  he  must  be  prepared 
to  tackle  many  of  the  Cartesians  (if  not  Descartes  himself), 
Spinoza  and  Leibnitz  among  the  philosophers,  Augustine, 
Thomas  Aquinas,  Calvin  and  his  followers  among  theologians, 
as  Materialists — and  that  surely  is  a  sufficient  reductio  ad 
dbsurdum  of  such  a  classification. 

The  truth  is,  that  in  his  zeal  to  paint  "  Materialism,"  in 
large  letters,  on  everything  he  dislikes,  Mr.  Lilly  forgets  a 
very  important  fact,  which,  however,  must  be  patent  to  every 
one  who  has  paid  attention  to  the  history  of  human  thought ; 
and  that  fact  is,  that  every  one  of  the  speculative  difficulties 
which  beset  Kant's  three  problems,  the  existence  of  a  Deity, 
the  freedom  of  the  will,  and  immortality,  existed  ages  before 
anything  that  can  be  called  physical  science,  and  would  con- 
tinue to  exist  if  modern  physical  science  were  swept  away. 
All  that  physical  science  has  done  has  been  to  make,  as  it 
were,  visible  and  tangible  some  difficulties  that  formerly  were 
more  hard  of  apprehension.  Moreover,  these  difficulties  exist 
just  as  much  on  the  hypothesis  of  Idealism  as  on  that  of 
Materialism. 

The  student  of  nature,  who  starts  from  the  axiom  of  the 
universality  of  the  law  of  causation,  can  not  refuse  to  admit 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  179 

an  eternal  existence ;  if  he  admits  the  conservation  of  energy, 
he  can  not  deny  the  possibility  of  an  eternal  energy ;  if  he 
admits  the  existence  of  immaterial  phenomena  in  the  form 
of  consciousness,  he  must  admit  the  possibility,  at  any  rate, 
of  an  eternal  series  of  such  phenomena ;  and,  if  his  studies 
have  not  been  barren  of  the  best  fruit  of  the  investigation  of 
nature,  he  will  have  enough  sense  to  see  that  when  Spinoza 
says,  "  Per  Deum  intelligo  ens  absolute  infinitum,  hoc  est 
substantiam  constantem  infinitis  attributis,"  the  God  so  con- 
ceived is  one  that  only  a  very  great  fool  would  deny,  even  in 
his  heart.  Physical  science  is  as  little  Atheistic  as  it  is  Mate- 
rialistic. 

So  with  respect  to  immortality.  As  physical  science 
states  this  problem,  it  seems  to  stand  thus:  Is  there  any 
means  of  knowing  whether  the  series  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness, which  has  been  casually  associated  for  threescore  years 
and  ten  with  the  arrangement  and  movements  of  innumera- 
ble millions  of  successively  different  material  molecules,  can 
be  continued,  in  like  association  with  some  substance  which 
has  not  the  properties  of  matter  and  force  ?  As  Kant  said, 
on  a  like  occasion,  if  anybody  can  answer  that  question,  he 
is  just  the  man  I  want  to  see.  If  he  says  that  consciousness 
can  not  exist,  except  in  relation  of  cause  and  effect  with  cer- 
tain organic  molecules,  I  must  ask  how  he  knows  that ;  and 
if  he  says  it  can,  I  must  put  the  same  question.  And  I  am 
afraid  that,  like  jesting  Pilate,  I  shall  not  think  it  worth 
while  (having  but  little  time  before  me)  to  wait  for  an  an- 
swer. 

Lastly,  with  respect  to  the  old  riddle  of  the  freedom  of 
the  will.  In  the  only  sense  in  which  the  word  freedom  is 
intelligible  to  me — that  is  to  say,  the  absence  of  any  restraint 
upon  doing  what  one  likes  within  certain  limits — physical 
science  certainly  gives  no  more  ground  for  doubting  it  than 
the  common  sense  of  mankind  does.  And  if  physical  science, 
in  strengthening  our  belief  in  the  universality  of  causation 
and  abolishing  chance  as  an  absurdity,  leads  to  the  conclu- 


180  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

sions  of  determinism,  it  does  no  more  than  follow  the  track 
of  consistent  and  logical  thinkers  in  philosophy  and  in  the- 
ology, before  it  existed  or  was  thought  of.  Whoever  accepts 
the  universality  of  the  law  of  causation  as  a  dogma  of  philos- 
ophy, denies  the  existence  of  uncaused  phenomena.  And  the 
essence  of  that  which  is  improperly  called  the  freewill  doc- 
trine is  that  occasionally,  at  any  rate,  human  volition  is  self- 
caused,  that  is  to  say,  not  caused  at  all ;  for  to  cause  one's  self 
one  must  have  anteceded  one's  self — which  is,  to  say  the  least 
of  it,  difficult  to  imagine. 

Whoever  accepts  the  existence  of  an  omniscient  Deity  as 
a  dogma  of  theology,  affirms  that  the  order  of  things  is  fixed 
from  eternity  to  eternity ;  for  the  fore-knowledge  of  an  oc- 
currence means  that  the  occurrence  will  certainly  happen; 
and  the  certainty  of  an  event  happening  is  what  is  meant  by 
its  being  fixed  or  fated.* 

*  I  may  cite  in  support  of  this  obvious  conclusion  of  sound  reason- 
ing, two  authorities  who  will  certainly  not  be  regarded  lightly  by  Mr. 
Lilly.  These  are  Augustine  and  Thomas  Aquinas.  The  former  declares 
that  "  Fate  "  is  only  an  ill-chosen  name  for  Providence. 

"  Prorsus  divina  procidentia  regna  constituuntur  humana.  Quse  si 
propterea  quisquam  fato  tribuit,  quia  ipsam  Dei  voluntatem  vel  potesta- 
tem  f ati  nomine  appellat,  sententiam  teneat,  linguam  corrigat "  (Augus- 
tinus  De  Civitate  Dei,  V.  c.  i.). 

The  other  great  doctor  of  the  Catholic  Church,  "  Divus  Thomas,"  as 
Suarez  calls  him,  whose  marvelous  grasp  and  subtlety  of  intellect  seem 
to  me  to  be  almost  without  a  parallel,  puts  the  whole  case  into  a  nut- 
shell, when  he  says  that  the  ground  for  doing  a  thing  in  the  mind  of 
the  doer  is  as  it  were  the  pre-existence  of  the  thing  done : 

"  Ratio  autem  alicujus  fiendi  in  mente  actoris  existens  est  quaedam 
prae-existentia  rei  fiendse  in  eo  "  (Summa,  Qu.  xxiii.  Art.  i.). 

If  this  is  not  enough,  I  may  further  ask  what  "  Materialist "  has 
ever  given  a  better  statement  of  the  case  for  determinism,  on  theistic 
grounds,  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  following  passage  of  the  Summa, 
Qu.  xiv.  Art.  xiii. 

"  Omnia  quas  sunt  in  tempore,  sunt  Deo  ab  seterno  prassentia,  non 
solum  ea  ex  ratione  qua  habet  rationes  rerum  apud  se  presentes,  ut  quae- 
dam  dicunt,  sed  quia  ejus  intuitus  fertur  ab  aeterno  supra  omnia,  prout 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  181 

Whoever  asserts  the  existence  of  an  omnipotent  Deity, 
that  he  made  and  sustains  all  things,  and  is  the  causa  causa- 
rum,  can  not,  without  a  contradiction  in  terms,  assert  that 
there  is  any  cause  independent  of  him ;  and  it  is  a  mere  sub- 
terfuge to  assert  that  the  cause  of  all  things  can  "  permit " 
one  of  these  things  to  be  an  independent  cause. 

Whoever  asserts  the  combination  of  omniscience  and  om- 
nipotence as  attributes  of  the  Deity,  does  implicitly  assert 
predestination.  For  he  who  knowingly  makes  a  thing  and 
places  it  in  circumstances  the  operation  of  which  on  that 
thing  he  is  perfectly  acquainted  with,  does  predestine  that 
thing  to  whatever  fate  may  befall  it. 

Thus,  to  come,  at  last,  to  the  really  important  part  of  all 
this  discussion,  if  the  belief  in  a  God  is  essential  to  morality, 
physical  science  offers  no  obstacle  thereto;  if  the  belief  in 
immortality  is  essential  to  morality,  physical  science  has  no 
more  to  say  against  the  probability  of  that  doctrine  than  the 
most  ordinary  experience  has,  and  it  effectually  closes  the 
mouths  of  those  who  pretend  to  refute  it  by  objections  de- 
duced from  merely  physical  data.  Finally,  if  the  belief  in 
the  uncausedness  of  volition  is  essential  to  morality,  the 
student  of  physical  science  has  no  more  to  say  against  that 
absurdity  than  the  logical  philosopher  or  theologian.  Phys- 
ical science,  I  repeat,  did  not  invent  determinism,  and  the 
deterministic  doctrine  would  stand  on  just  as  firm  a  founda- 
tion as  it  does  if  there  were  no  physical  science.  Let  any  one 
who  doubts  this  read  Jonathan  Edwards,  whose  demonstra- 
tions are  derived  wholly  from  philosophy  and  theology. 

Thus,  when  Mr.  Lilly,  like  another  Solomon  Eagle,  goes 

sunt  in  sua  praesentialitate.  Unde  manifestum  est  quod  contingentia 
infallioiliter  a  Deo  cognoscmitur,  in  quantum  subduntur  divino  con- 
spectui  secundum  suam  praesentialitatem ;  et  tamen  sunt  futura  contin- 
gentia, suis  causis  proximis  comparata." 

[As  I  have  not  said  that  Thomas  Aquinas  is  professedly  a  detercnin- 
ist,  I  do  not  see  the  bearing  of  citations  from  him  which  may  be  more 
or  less  inconsistent  with  the  foregoing.] 


182  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

about  proclaiming  "  Woe  to  this  wicked  city,"  and  denounc- 
ing physical  science  as  the  evil  genius  of  modern  days — 
mother  of  materialism,  and  fatalism,  and  all  sorts  of  other 
condemnable  isms — I  venture  to  beg  him  to  lay  the  blame  on 
the  right  shoulders ;  or,  at  least,  to  put  in  the  dock,  along 
with  Science,  those  sinful  sisters  of  hers,  Philosophy  and 
Theology,  who,  being  so  much  older,  should  have  known  bet- 
ter than  the  poor  Cinderella  of  the  schools  and  universities 
over  which  they  have  so  long  dominated.  No  doubt  modern 
society  is  diseased  enough ;  but  then  it  does  not  differ  from 
older  civilizations  in  that  respect.  Societies  of  men  are.  fer- 
menting masses,  and  as  beer  has  what  the  Germans  call 
"  Oberhefe  "  and  "  Unterhefe,"  so  every  society  that  has  ex- 
isted  has  had  its  scum  at  the  top  and  its  dregs  at  the  bottom ; 
but  I  doubt  if  any  of  the  "  ages  of  faith  "  had  less  scum  or 
less  dregs,  or  even  showed  a  proportionally  greater  quantity 
of  sound  wholesome  stuff  in  the  vat.  I  think  it  would  puz- 
zle Mr.  Lilly,  or  any  one  else,  to  adduce  convincing  evidence 
that,  at  any  period  of  the  world's  history,  there  was  a  more 
widespread  sense  of  social  duty,  or  a  greater  sense  of  justice, 
or  of  the  obligation  of  mutual  help,  than  in  this  England  of 
ours.  Ah !  but,  says  Mr.  Lilly,  these  are  all  products  of  our 
Christian  inheritance ;  when  Christian  dogmas  vanish  virtue 
will  disappear  too,  and  the  ancestral  ape  and  tiger  will  have 
full  play.  But  there  are  a  good  many  people  who  think  it 
obvious  that  Christianity  also  inherited  a  good  deal  from 
Paganism  and  from  Judaism  ;  and  that,  if  the  Stoics  and  the 
Jews  revoked  their  bequest,  the  moral  property  of  Christian- 
ity would  realize  very  little.  And,  if  morality  has  survived 
the  stripping  off  of  several  sets  of  clothes  which  have  been 
found  to  fit  badly,  why  should  it  not  be  able  to  get  on  very 
well  in  the  light  and  handy  garments  which  Science  is  ready 
to  provide  ? 

But  this  by  the  way.  If  the  diseases  of  society  consist  in 
the  weakness  of  its  faith  in  the  existence  of  the  God  of  the 
theologians,  in  a  future  state,  and  in  uncaused  volitions,  the 


SCIENCE  AND  MORALS.  183 

indication,  as  the  doctors  say,  is  to  suppress  Theology  and 
Philosophy,  whose  bickerings  about  things  of  which  they 
know  nothing  have  been  the  prime  cause  and  continual  sus- 
tenance of  that  evil  skepticism  which  is  the  Nemesis  of  med- 
dling with  the  unknowable. 

Cinderella  is  modestly  conscious  of  her  ignorance  of  these 
high  matters.  She  lights  the  fire,  sweeps  the  house,  and  pro- 
vides the  dinner ;  and  is  rewarded  by  being  told  that  she  is  a 
base  creature,  devoted  to  low  and  material  interests.  But  in 
her  garret  she  has  fairy  visions  out  of  the  ken  of  the  pair  of 
shrews  who  are  quarreling  downstairs.  She  sees  the  order 
which  pervades  the  seeming  disorder  of  the  world ;  the  great 
drama  of  evolution,  with  its  full  share  of  pity  and  terror,  but 
also  with  abundant  goodness  and  beauty,  unrolls  itself  before 
her  eyes ;  and  she  learns,  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  the  lesson, 
that  the  foundation  of  morality  is  to  have  done,  once  and  for 
all,  with  lying;  to  give  up  pretending  to  believe  that  for 
which  there  is  no  evidence,  and  repeating  unintelligible 
propositions  about  things  beyond  the  possibilities  of  knowl- 
edge. 

She  knows  that  the  safety  of  morality  lies  neither  in  the 
adoption  of  this  or  that  philosophical  speculation,  or  this  or 
that  theological  creed,  but  in  a  real  and  living  belief  in  that 
fixed  order  of  nature  which  sends  social  disorganization  upon 
the  track  of  immorality,  as  surely  as  it  sends  physical  disease 
after  physical  trespasses.  And  of  that  firm  and  lively  faith  it 
is  her  high  mission  to  be  the  priestess. 


VI. 
SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM. 

Next  to  undue  precipitation  in  anticipating  the  results 
of  pending  investigations,  the  intellectual  sin  which  is  com- 
monest and  most  hurtful  to  those  who  devote  themselves  to 
the  increase  of  knowledge  is  the  omission  to  profit  by  the  ex- 
perience of  their  predecessors  recorded  in  the  history  of  sci- 
ence and  philosophy.  It  is  true  that,  at  the  present  day, 
there  is  more  excuse  than  at  any  former  time  for  such  neg- 
lect. No  small  labor  is  needed  to  raise  one's  self  to  the  level 
of  the  acquisitions  already  made ;  and  able  men,  who  have 
achieved  thus  much,  know  that,  if  they  devote  themselves 
body  and  soul  to  the  increase  of  their  store,  and  avoid  looking 
back,  with  as  much  care  as  if  the  injunction  laid  on  Lot  and 
his  family  were  binding  upon  them,  such  devotion  is  sure  to 
be  richly  repaid  by  the  joys  of  the  discoverer  and  the  solace 
of  fame,  if  not  by  rewards  of  a  less  elevated  character. 

So,  following  the  advice  of  Francis  Bacon,  we  refuse  inter 
mortuos  queer  ere  vivum  ;  we  leave  the  past  to  bury  its  dead, 
and  ignore  our  intellectual  ancestry.  Nor  are  we  content 
with  that.  We  follow  the  evil  example  set  us,  not  only  by 
Bacon  but  by  almost  all  the  men  of  the  Eenaissance,  in  pour- 
ing scorn  upon  the  work  of  our  immediate  spiritual  fore- 
fathers, the  schoolmen  of  the  middle  ages.  It  is  accepted  as 
a  truth  which  is  indisputable,  that,  for  seven  or  eight  centu- 
ries, a  long  succession  of  able  men — some  of  them  of  tran- 
scendent acuteness  and  encyclopaedic  knowledge — devoted 
laborious  lives  to  the  grave  discussion  of  mere  frivolities  and 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    185 

the  arduous  pursuit  of  intellectual  will-o'-the-wisps.  To  say 
nothing  of  a  little  modesty,  a  little  impartial  pondering  over 
personal  experience  might  suggest  a  doubt  as  to  the  adequacy 
of  this  short  and  easy  method  of  dealing  with  a  large  chapter 
of  the  history  of  the  human  mind.  Even  an  acquaintance 
with  popular  literature  which  had  extended  so  far  as  to  in- 
clude that  part  of  the  contributions  of  Sam  Slick  which  con- 
tains his  weighty  aphorism  that  "there  is  a  great  deal  of 
human  nature  in  all  mankind,"  might  raise  a  doubt  whether, 
after  all,  the  men  of  that  epoch,  who,  take  them  all  round, 
were  endowed  with  wisdom  and  folly  in  much  the  same  pro- 
portion as  ourselves,  were  likely  to  display  nothing  better 
than  the  qualities  of  energetic  idiots,  when  they  devoted 
their  faculties  to  the  elucidation  of  problems  which  were  to 
them,  and  indeed  are  to  us,  the  most  serious  which  life  has 
to  offer.  Speaking  for  myself,  the  longer  I  live  the  more  I 
am  disposed  to  think  that  there  is  much  less  either  of  pure 
folly,  or  of  pure  wickedness,  in  the  world  than  is  commonly 
supposed.  It  may  be  doubted  if  any  sane  man  ever  said  to 
himself,  "  Evil  be  thou  my  good,"  and  I  have  never  yet  had 
the  good  fortune  to  meet  with  a  perfect  fool.  When  I  have 
brought  to  the  icquiry  the  patience  and  long-suffering  which 
become  a  scientific  investigator,  the  most  promising  speci- 
mens have  turned  out  to  have  a  good  deal  to  say  for  them- 
selves from  their  own  point  of  view.  And,  sometimes,  calm 
reflection  has  taught  the  humiliating  lesson,  that  their  point 
of  view  was  not  so  different  from  my  own  as  I  had  fondly 
imagined.  Comprehension  is  more  than  half-way  to  sympa- 
thy, here  as  elsewhere. 

If  we  turn  our  attention  to  scholastic  philosophy  in  the 
frame  of  mind  suggested  by  these  prefatory  remarks,  it  as- 
sumes a  very  different  character  from  that  which  it  bears  in 
general  estimation.  No  doubt  it  is  surrounded  by  a  dense 
thicket  of  thorny  logomachies  and  obscured  by  the  dust- 
clouds  of  a  barbarous  and  perplexing  terminology.  But  sup- 
pose that,  undeterred  by  much  grime  and  many  scratches, 


186  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  explorer  has  toiled  through  this  jungle,  he  comes  to  an 
open  country  which  is  amazingly  like  his  dear  native  land. 
The  hills  which  he  has  to  climb,  the  ravines  he  has  to  avoid, 
look  very  much  the  same ;  there  is  the  same  infinite  space 
above,  and  the  same  abyss  of  the  unknown  below ;  the  means 
of  traveling  are  the  same,  and  the  goal  is  the  same. 

That  goal  for  the  schoolmen,  as  for  us,  is  the  settlement 
of  the  question  how  far  the  universe  is  the  manifestation  of 
a  rational  order ;  in  other  words,  how  far  logical  deduction 
from  indisputable  premises  will  account  for  that  which  has 
happened  and  does  happen.  That  was  the  object  of  scho- 
lasticism, and,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  object  of  modern 
science  may  be  expressed  in  the  same  terms.  In  pursuit  of 
this  end,  modern  science  takes  into  account  all  the  phenomena 
of  the  universe  which  are  brought  to  our  knowledge  by  ob- 
servation or  by  experiment.  It  admits  that  there  are  two 
worlds  to  be  considered,  the  one  physical  and  the  other 
psychical ;  and  that  though  there  is  a  most  intimate  relation 
and  interconnection  between  the  two,  the  bridge  from  one  to 
the  other  has  yet  to  be  found ;  that  their  phenomena  run, 
not  in  one  series,  but  along  two  parallel  lines. 

To  the  schoolmen  the  duality  of  the  universe  appeared 
under  a  different  aspect.  How  this  came  about  will  not  be 
intelligible  unless  we  clearly  apprehend  the  fact  that  they  did 
really  believe  in  dogmatic  Christianity  as  it  was  formulated 
by  the  Eoman  Church.  They  did  not  give  a  mere  dull  assent 
to  anything  the  Church  told  them  on  Sundays,  and  ignore 
her  teachings  for  the  rest  of  the  week ;  but  they  lived  and 
moved  and  had  their  being  in  that  supersensible  theological 
world  which  was  created,  or  rather  grew  up,  during  the  first 
four  centuries  of  our  reckoning,  and  which  occupied  their 
thoughts  far  more  than  the  sensible  world  in  which  their 
earthly  lot  was  cast. 

For  the  most  part,  we  learn  history  from  the  colorless 
compendiums-  or  partisan  briefs  of  mere  scholars,  who  have 
too  little  acquaintance  with  practical  life,  and  too  little  in- 


SCIENTIFIC  AND   PSEUDO-SCIENTiFIC  REALISM.    187 

sight  into  speculative  problems,  to  understand  that  about 
which  they  write.  In  historical  science,  as  in  all  sciences 
which  have  to  do  with  concrete  phenomena,  laboratory  prac- 
tice is  indispensable ;  and  the  laboratory  practice  of  historical 
science  is  afforded,  on  the  one  hand,  by  active  social  and  po- 
litical life,  and,  on  the  othei,  by  the  study  of  those  tendencies 
and  operations  of  the  mind  which  embody  themselves  in 
philosophical  and  theological  systems.  Thucydides  and  Taci- 
tus, and,  to  come  nearer  our  own  time,  Hume  and.  Grote  were 
men  of  affairs,  and  had  acquired,  by  direct  contact  with  social 
and  political  history  in  the  making,  the  secret  of  understand- 
ing how  such  history  is  made.  Our  notions  of  the  intellect- 
ual history  of  the  middle  ages  are,  unfortunately,  too  often 
derived  from  writers  who  have  never  seriously  grappled  with 
philosophical  and  theological  problems :  and  hence  that 
strange  myth  of  a  millennium  of  moonshine  to  which  I  have 
adverted. 

However,  no  very  profound  study  of  the  works  of  con- 
temporary writers  who,  without  devoting  themselves  specially 
to  theology  or  philosophy,  were  learned  and  enlightened — 
such  men,  for  example,  as  Eginhard  or  Dante — is  necessary 
to  convince  one's  self  that,  for  them,  the  world  of  the  theolo- 
gian was  an  ever-present  and  awful  reality.  From  the  center 
of  that  world,  the  Divine  Trinity,  surrounded  by  a  hierarchy 
of  angels  and  saints,  contemplated  and  governed  the  insignifi- 
cant sensible  world  in  which  the  inferior  spirits  of  men,  bur- 
dened with  the  debasement  of  their  material  embodiment 
and  continually  solicited  to  their  perdition  by  a  no  less  nu- 
merous and  almost  as  powerful  hierarchy  of  devils,  were 
constantly  struggling  on  the  edge  of  the  pit  of  everlasting 
damnation.* 

*  There  is  no  exaggeration  in  this  brief  and  summary  view  of  the 
Catholic  cosmos.  But  it  would  be  unfair  to  leave  it  to  be  supposed  that 
the  Reformation  made  any  essential  alteration,  except  perhaps  for  the 
worse,  in  that  cosmology  which  called  itself  "  Christian."  The  protag- 
onist of  the  Reformation,  from  whom  the  whole  of  the  Evangelical  sects 


188  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

The  men  of  the  middle  ages  believed  that  through  the 
Scriptures,  the  traditions  of  the  Fathers,  and  the  authority 
of  the  Church,  they  were  in  possession  of  far  more,  and  more 
trustworthy,  information  with  respect  to  the  nature  and 
order  of  things  in  the  theological  world  than  they  had  in  re- 
gard to  the  nature  and  order  of  things  in  the  sensible  world. 
And,  if  the  two  sources  of  information  came  into  conflict,  so 
much  the  worse  for  the  sensible  world,  which  after  all,  was 
more  or  less  under  the  dominion  of  Satan.  Let  us  suppose 
that  a  telescope  powerful  enough  to  show  us  what  is  going 
on  in  the  nebula  of  the  sword  of  Orion,  should  reveal  a  world 
in  which  stones  fell  upward,  parallel  lines  met,  and  the 
fourth  dimension  of  space  was  quite  obvious.  Men  of  science 
would  have  only  two  alternatives  before  them.  Either  the 
terrestrial  and  the  nebular  facts  must  be  brought  into  har- 
mony by  such  feats  of  subtle  sophistry  as  the  human  mind  is 
always  capable  of  performing  when  driven  into  a  corner ;  or 
science  must  throw  down  its  arms  in  despair,  and  commit 
suicide,  either  by  the  admission  that  the  universe  is,  after  all, 
irrational,  inasmuch  as  that  which  is  truth  in  one  corner  of  it 
is  absurdity  in  another,  or  by  a  declaration  of  incompetency. 

are  lineally  descended,  states  the  case  with  that  plainness  of  speech,  not 
to  say  brutality,  which  characterized  him.  Luther  says  that  man  is  a 
beast  of  burden  who  only  moves  as  his  rider  orders ;  sometimes  God 
rides  him,  and  sometimes  Satan.  "  Sic  voluntas  humana  in  medio 
posita  est,  ceu  jumentum ;  si  insederit  Deus,  vult  et  vadit,  quo  vult 
Deus.  ...  Si  insederit  Satan,  vult  et  vadit,  quo  vult  Satan ;  nee  est  in 
ejus  arbitrio  ad  utrum  sessorem  currere,  aut  eum  quaerere,  sed  ipsi  ses- 
sores  certant  ob  ipsum  obtinendum  et  possidendum  "  (De  Servo  Arbi- 
trio, M.  Lutheri  Opera,  ed  1546,  t.  ii.  p.  468).  One  may  hear  substan- 
tially the  same  doctrine  preached  in  the  parks  and  at  street-corners  by 
zealous  volunteer  missionaries  of  Evangelicism,  any  Sunday,  in  modern 
London.  Why  these  doctrines,  which  are  conspicuous  by  their  absence 
in  the  four  Gospels,  should  arrogate  to  themselves  the  title  of  Evangeli- 
cal, in  contradistinction  to  Catholic,  Christianity,  may  well  perplex  the 
impartial  inquirer,  who,  if  he  were  obliged  to  choose  between  the  two, 
might  naturally  prefer  that  which  leaves  the  poor  beast  of  burden  a 
little  freedom  of  choice. 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    189 

In  the  middle  ages,  the  labors  of  those  great  men  who 
endeavored  to  reconcile  the  system  of  thought  which  start- 
ed from  the  data  of  pure  reason,  with  that  which  started 
from  the  data  of  Roman  theology,  produced  the  system  of 
thought  which  is  known  as  scholastic  philosophy ;  the  al- 
ternative of  surrender  and  suicide  is  exemplified  by  Avi- 
cenna  and  his  followers  when  they  declared  that  that  which 
is  true  in  theology  may  be  false  in  philosophy,  and  vice  versd; 
and  by  Sanchez  in  his  famous  defense  of  the  thesis  "  Quod 
nil  scitur." 

To  those  who  deny  the  validity  of  one  of  the  primary  as- 
sumptions of  the  disputants — who  decline,  on  the  ground  of 
the  utter  insufficiency  of  the  evidence,  to  put  faith  in  the 
reality  of  that  other  world,  the  geography  and  the  inhabit- 
ants of  which  are  so  confidently  described  in  the  so-called  * 
Christianity  of  Catholicism — the  long  and  bitter  contest, 
which  engaged  the  best  intellects  for  so  many  centuries,  may 
seem  a  terrible  illustration  of  the  wasteful  way  in  which  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  carried  on  in  the  world  of  thought, 
no  less  than  in  that  of  matter.  But  there  is  a  more  cheerful 
mode  of  looking  at  the  history  of  scholasticism.  It  ground 
and  sharpened  the  dialectic  implements  of  our  race  as  per- 
haps nothing  but  discussions,  in  the  result  of  which  men 
thought  their  eternal  no  less  than  their  temporal  interests 
were  at  stake,  could  have  done.  When  a  logical  blunder 
may  insure  combustion,  not  only  in  the  next  world  but  in 
this,  the  construction  of  syllogisms  acquires  a  peculiar  in- 
terest. Moreover,  the  schools  kept  the  thinking  faculty  alive 
and  active,  when  the  disturbed  state  of  civil  life,  the  mephitic 
atmosphere  engendered  by  the  dominant  ecclesiasticism,  and 
the  almost  total  neglect  of  natural  knowledge,  might  well 
have  stifled  it.     And,  finally,  it  should  be  remembered  that 

*  I  say  "  so-called  "  not  by  way  of  offense,  but  as  a  protest  against 
the  monstrous  assumption  that  Catholic  Christianity  is  explicitly  or 
implicitly  contained  in  any  trustworthy  record  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth. 


190  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

scholasticism  really  did  thrash  out  pretty  effectually  certain 
problems  which  have  presented  themselves  to  mankind  ever 
since  they  began  to  think,  and  which,  I  suppose,  will  present 
themselves  so  long  as  they  continue  to  think.  Consider,  for 
example,  the  controversy  of  the  Realists  and  the  Nominalists, 
which  was  carried  on  with  varying  fortunes,  and  under  vari- 
ous names,  from  the  time  of  Scotus  Erigena  to  the  end  of 
the  scholastic  period.  Has  it  now  a  merely  antiquarian  in- 
terest ?  Has  Nominalism,  in  any  of  its  modifications,  so 
completely  won  the  day  that  Realism  may  be  regarded  as 
dead  and  buried  without  hope  of  resurrection?  Many  peo- 
ple seem  to  think  so,  but  it  appears  to  me  that,  without  tak- 
ing Catholic  philosophy  into  consideration,  one  has  not  to 
look  about  far  to  find  evidence  that  Realism  is  still  to  the 
fore,  and  indeed  extremely  lively.* 

The  other  day  I  happened  to  meet  with  a  report  of  a 
sermon  recently  preached  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  From 
internal  evidence  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  report  is 
substantially  correct.  But  as  I  have  not  the  slightest  inten- 
tion of  finding  fault  with  the  eminent  theologian  and  elo- 
quent preacher  to  whom  the  discourse  is  attributed,  for 
employment  of  scientific  language  in  a  manner  for  which  he 
could  find  only  too  many  scientific  precedents,  the  accuracy 
of  the  report  in  detail  is  not  to  the  purpose.  I  may  safely 
take  it  as  the  embodiment  of  views  which  are  thought  to  be 

*  It  may  be  desirable  to  observe  that,  in  modern  times,  the  term 
"Realism"  has  acquired  a  signification  wholly  different  from  that 
which  attached  to  it  in  the  middle  ages.  We  commonly  use  it  as  the 
contrary  of  Idealism.  The  Idealist  holds  that  the  phenomenal  world 
has  only  a  subjective  existence,  the  Realist  that  it  has  an  objective  ex- 
istence. I  am  not  aware  that  any  mediaeval  philosopher  was  an  Idealist 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  apply  the  term  to  Berkeley.  In  fact,  the  car- 
dinal defect  of  their  speculations  lies  in  their  oversight  of  the  con- 
siderations which  lead  to  Idealism.  If  many  of  them  regarded  the  ma- 
terial world  as  a  negation,  it  was  an  active  negation ;  not  zero,  but  a 
minus  quantity. 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    191 

quite  in  accordance  with  science  by  many  excellent,  instructed, 
and  intelligent  people. 

The  preacher  further  contended  that  it  was  yet  more  difficult 
to  realize  that  our  earthly  home  would  become  the  scene  of  a  vast 
physical  catastrophe.  Imagination  recoils  from  the  idea  that  the 
course  of  nature — the  phrase  helps  to  disguise  the  truth — so  un- 
varying and  regular,  the  ordered  sequence  of  movement  and 
life,  should  suddenly  cease.  Imagination  looks  more  reasonable 
when  it  assumes  the  air  of  scientific  reason.  Physical  law,  it 
says,  will  prevent  the  occurrence  of  catastrophes  only  anticipated 
by  an  apostle  in  an  unscientific  age.  Might  not  there,  however, 
be  a  suspension  of  a  lower  law  by  the  intervention  of  a  higher  ? 
Thus  every  time  we  lifted  our  arms  we  defied  the  laws  of  gravi- 
tation, and  in  railways  and  steamboats  powerful  laws  were  held 
in  check  by  others.  The  flood  and  the  destruction  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah  were  brought  about  by  the  operations  of  existing 
laws,  and  may  it  not  be  that  in  His  illimitable  universe  there  are 
more  important  laws  than  those  which  surround  our  puny  life — 
moral  and  not  merely  physical  forces  ?  Is  it  inconceivable  that 
the  day  will  come  when  these  royal  and  ultimate  laws  shall  wreck 
the  natural  order  of  things  which  seems  so  stable  and  so  fair  ? 
Earthquakes  were  not  things  of  remote  antiquity,  as  an  island  off 
Italy,  the  Eastern  Archipelago,  Greece,  and  Chicago  bore  witness. 
...  In  presence  of  a  great  earthquake  men  feel  how  powerless 
they  are,  and  their  very  knowledge  adds  to  their  weakness.  The 
end  of  human  probation,  the  final  dissolution  of  organized  soci- 
ety, and  the  destruction  of  man's  home  on  the  surface  of  the 
globe,  were  none  of  them  violently  contrary  to  our  present  ex- 
perience, but  only  the  extension  of  present  facts.  The  presenti- 
ment of  death  was  common ;  there  were  felt  to  be  many  things 
which  threatened  the  existence  of  society ;  and  as  our  globe  was 
a  ball  of  fire,  at  any  moment  the  pent-up  forces  which  surge 
and  boil  beneath  our  feet  night  be  poured  out  {Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  December  6,  1886). 

The  preacher  appears  to  entertain  the  notion  that  the  oc- 
currence of  a  "  catastrophe  "  *  involves  a  breach  of  the  pres- 

*  At  any  rate  a  catastrophe  greater  than  the  flood,  which,  as  I  ob- 
serve with  interest,  is  as  calmly  assumed  by  the  preacher  to  be  an  his' 
torical  event  as  if  science  had  never  had  a  word  to  say  on  that  subject  I 


192  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ent  order  of  nature — that  it  is  an  event  incompatible  with 
the  physical  laws  which  at  present  obtain.  He  seems  to  be 
of  opinion  that  "  scientific  reason  "  lends  its  authority  to 
the  imaginative  supposition  that  physical  law  will  prevent 
the  occurrence  of  the  "  catastrophes  "  anticipated  by  an  un- 
scientific apostle. 

Scientific  reason,  like  Homer,  sometimes  nods  ;  but  I  am 
not  aware  that  it  has  ever  dreamed  dreams  of  this  sort.  The 
fundamental  axiom  of  scientific  thought  is  that  there  is  not, 
never  has  been,  and  never  will  be  any  disorder  in  nature. 
The  admission  of  the  occurrence  of  any  event  which  was  not 
the  logical  consequence  of  the  immediately  antecedent  events 
according  to  these  definite,  ascertained,  or  unascertained,  rules 
which  we  call  the  "  laws  of  nature,"  would  be  an  act  of  self- 
destruction  on  the  part  of  science. 

"  Catastrophe  "  is  a  relative  conception.  For  ourselves  it 
means  an  event  which  brings  about  very  terrible  consequences 
to  man,  or  impresses  his  mind  by  its  magnitude  relatively  to 
him.  But  events  which  are  quite  in  the  natural  order  of 
things  to  us,  may  be  frightful  catastrophes  to  other  sentient 
beings.  Surely  no  interruption  of  the  order  of  nature  is  in- 
volved if,  in  the  course  of  descending  through  an  Alpine 
pine-wood,  I  jump  upon  an  anthill  and  in  a  moment  wreck  a 
whole  city  and  destroy  a  hundred  thousand  of  its  inhabitants. 
To  the  ants  the  catastrophe  is  worse  than  the  earthquake  of 
Lisbon.  To  me  it  is  the  natural  and  necessary  consequence 
of  the  laws  of  matter  in  motion.  A  redistribution  of  energy 
has  taken  place,  which  is  perfectly  in  accordance  with  natural 
order,  however  unpleasant  its  effects  may  be  to  the  ants. 

Imagination,  inspired  by  scientific  reason,  and  not  merely 
assuming  the  airs  thereof,  as  it  unfortunately  too  often  does 
in  the  pulpit,  so  far  from  having  any  right  to  repudiate 
catastrophes  and  deny  the  possibility  of  the  cessation  of  mo- 
tion and  life,  easily  finds  justification  for  the  exactly  contrary 
course.  Kant  in  his  famous  Theory  of  the  Heavens  declares 
the  end  of  the  world  and  its  reduction  to  a  formless  condition 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    193 

to  be  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  causes  to  which  it  owes 
its  origin  and  continuance.  And,  as  to  catastrophes  of  pro- 
digious magnitude  and  frequent  occurrence,  they  were  the 
favorite  asylum  ignorantim  of  geologists,  not  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago.  If  modern  geology  is  becoming  more  and  more 
disinclined  to  call  in  catastrophes  to  its  aid,  it  is  not  because 
of  any  a  priori  difficulty  in  reconciling  the  occurrence  of 
such  events  with  the  universality  of  order,  but  because  the 
a  posteriori  evidence  of  the  occurrence  of  events  of  this 
character  in  past  times  has  more  or  less  completely  broken 
down. 

It  is,  to  say  the  least,  highly  probable  that  this  earth  is  a 
mass  of  extremely  hot  matter,  invested  by  a  cooled  crust, 
through  which  the  hot  interior  still  continues  to  cool,  though 
with  extreme  slowness.  It  is  no  less  probable  that  the  faults 
and  dislocations,  the  foldings  and  fractures,  everywhere  visi- 
ble in  the  stratified  crust,  its  large  and  slow  movements 
through  miles  of  elevation  and  depression,  and  its  small  and 
rapid  movements  which  give  rise  to  the  innumerable  per- 
ceived and  unperceived  earthquakes  which  are  constantly 
occurring,  are  due  to  the  skrinkage  of  the  crust  on  its  cooling 
and  contracting  nucleus. 

Without  going  beyond  the  range  of  fair  scientific  analogy 
conditions  are  easily  conceivable  which  should  render  the  loss 
of  heat  far  more  rapid  than  it  is  at  present ;  and  such  an  oc- 
currence would  be  just  as  much  in  accordance  with  as- 
certained laws  of  nature  as  the  more  rapid  cooling  of  a  red- 
hot  bar,  when  it  is  thrust  into  cold  water,  than  when  it  re- 
mains in  the  air.  But  much  more  rapid  cooling  might  entail 
a  shifting  and  rearrangement  of  the  parts  of  the  crust  of  the 
earth  on  a  scale  of  unprecedented  magnitude,  and  bring  about 
"  catastrophes  "  to  which  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon  is  but  a 
trifle.  It  is  conceivable  that  man  and  his  works  and  all  the 
higher  forms  of  animal  life  should  be  utterly  destroyed ;  that 
mountain  regions  should  be  converted  into  ocean  depths  and 
the  floor  of  oceans  raised  into  mountains ;  and  the  earth  be- 


194  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

come  a  scene  of  horror  which  even  the  lurid  fancy  of  the 
writer  of  the  Apocalypse  would  fail  to  portray.  And  yet,  to 
the  eye  of  science,  there  would  be  no  more  disorder  here  than 
in  the  Sabbatical  peace  of  a  summer  sea.  Not  a  link  in  the 
chain  of  natural  causes  and  effects  would  be  broken,  nowhere 
would  there  be  the  slightest  indication  of  the  "  suspension  of 
a  lower  law  by  a  higher."  If  a  sober  scientific  thinker  is  in- 
clined to  put  little  faith  in  the  wild  vaticinations  of  universal 
ruin  which,  in  a  less  saintly  person  than  the  seer  of  Patmos, 
might  seem  to  be  dictated  by  the  fury  of  a  revengeful  fanatic 
rather  than  by  the  spirit  of  the  teacher  who  bid  men  love 
their  enemies,  it  is  not  on  the  ground  that  they  contradict 
scientific  principles;  but  because  the  evidence  of  their 
scientific  value  does  not  fulfill  the  conditions  on  which  weight 
is  attached  to  evidence.  The  imagination  which  supposes 
that  it  does,  simply  does  not  "  assume  the  air  of  scientific 
reason." 

I  repeat  that,  if  imagination  is  used  within  the  limits  laid 
down  by  science,  disorder  is  unimaginable.  If  a  being  en- 
dowed with  perfect  intellectual  and  aesthetic  faculties,  but 
devoid  of  the  capacity  for  suffering  pain,  either  physical  or 
moral,  were  to  devote  his  utmost  powers  to  the  investigation 
of  nature,  the  universe  would  seem  to  him  to  be  a  sort  of 
kaleidoscope,  in  which,  at  every  successive  moment  of  time,  a 
new  arrangement  of  parts  of  exquisite  beauty  and  symmetery 
would  present  itself  ;  and  each  of  them  would  show  itself  to 
be  the  logical  consequence  of  the  preceding  arrangement, 
under  the  conditions  which  we  call  the  laws  of  nature.  Such 
a  spectator  might  well  be  filled  with  that  Amor  intellectualis 
Dei,  the  beatific  vision  of  the  vita  contemplatively  which  some 
of  the  greatest  thinkers  of  all  ages,  Aristotle,  Aquinas,  Spi- 
noza, have  regarded  as  the  only  conceivable  eternal  felicity ; 
and  the  vision  of  illimitable  suffering,  as  if  sensitive  beings 
were  unregarded  animalcules  which  had  got  between  the  bits 
of  glass  of  the  -kaleidoscope,  which  mars  the  prospect  to  us 
poor  mortals,  in  no  wise  alters  the  fact  that  order  is  lord  of 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    195 

all,  and  disorder  only  a  name  for  that  part  of  the  order  which 
gives  us  pain. 

The  other  fallacious  employment  of  the  names  of  scienti- 
fic conceptions  which  pervades  the  preacher's  utterance, 
brings  me  back  to  the  proper  topic  of  the  present  paper.  It 
is  the  use  of  the  word  "  law  "  as  if  it  denoted  a  thing — as  if  a 
"  law  of  nature,"  as  science  understands  it,  were  a  being  en- 
dowed with  certain  powers,  in  virtue  of  which  the  phenomena 
expressed  by  that  law  are  brought  about.  The  preacher  asks, 
"  Might  not  there  be  a  suspension  of  a  lower  law  by  the  in- 
tervention of  a  higher  ?  "  He  tells  us  that  every  time  we  lift 
our  arms  we  defy  the  law  of  gravitation.  He  asks  whether 
some  day  certain  "  royal  and  ultimate  laws  "  may  not  come 
and  "  wreck "  those  laws  which  are  at  present,  it  would 
appear,  acting  as  nature's  police.  It  is  evident,  from  these 
expressions,  that  "  laws,"  in  the  mind  of  the  preacher,  are 
entities  having  an  objective  existence  in  a  graduated  hier- 
archy. And  it  would  appear  that  the  "  royal  laws  "  are  by 
no  means  to  be  regarded  as  constitutional  royalties  :  at  any 
moment,  they  may,  like  Eastern  despots,  descend  in  wrath 
among  the  middle  class  and  plebeian  laws,  which  have 
hitherto  done  the  drudgery  of  the  world's  work,  and,  to  use 
phraseology  not  unknown  in  our  seats  of  learning — "make 
hay"  of  their  belongings.  Or  perhaps  a  still  more  familiar 
analogy  has  suggested  this  singular  theory ;  and  it  is  thought 
that  high  laws  may  "  suspend  "  low  laws,  as  a  bishop  may 
suspend  a  curate. 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  controvert  these  views,  if  any  one 
likes  to  hold  them.  All  I  wish  to  remark  is  that  such  a  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  "  laws "  has  nothing"  to  do  with 
modern  science.  It  is  scholastic  realism — realism  as  intense 
and  unmitigated  as  that  of  Scotus  Erigena  a  thousand  years 
ago.  The  essence  of  such  realism  is  that  it  maintains  the 
objective  existence  of  universals,  or,  as  we  call  them  nowadays, 
general  propositions.  It  affirms,  for  example,  that  "  man  " 
is  a  real  thing,  apart  from  individual  men,  having  its  exist- 


196  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ence,  not  in  the  sensible,  but  in  the  intelligible  world,  and 
clothing  itself  with  the  accidents  of  sense  to  make  the  Jack 
and  Tom  and  Harry  whom  we  know.  Strange  as  such  a  no- 
tion may  appear  to  modern  scientific  thought,  it  really  per- 
vades ordinary  language.  There  are  few  people  who  would, 
at  once,  hesitate  to  admit  that  color,  for  example,  exists 
apart  from  the  mind  which  conceives  the  idea  of  color.  They 
hold  it  to  be  something  which  resides  in  the  colored  object ; 
and  so  far  they  are  as  much  Eealists  as  if  they  had  sat  at 
Plato's  feet.  Keflection  on  the  facts  of  the  case  must,  I  im- 
agine, convince  every  one  that  "  color  "  is — not  a  mere  name, 
which  was  the  extreme  Nominalist  position — but  a  name  for 
that  group  of  states  of  feeling  which  we  call  blue,  red,  yellow, 
and  so  on,  and  which  we  believe  to  be  caused  by  luminifer- 
ous  vibrations  which  have  not  the  slightest  resemblance  to 
color ;  while  these  again  are  set  afoot  by  states  of  the  body  to 
which  we  ascribe  color,  but  which  are  equally  devoid  of  like- 
ness to  color. 

In  the  same  way,  a  law  of  nature,  in  the  scientific  sense,  is 
the  product  of  a  mental  operation  upon  the  facts  of  nature 
which  come  under  our  observation,  and  has  no  more  existence 
outside  the  mind  than  color  has.  The  law  of  gravitation  is  a 
statement  of  the  manner  in  which  experience  shows  that 
bodies,  which  are  free  to  move,  do,  in  fact,  move  toward  an- 
other. But  the  other  facts  of  observation,  that  bodies  are 
not  always  moving  in  this  fashion,  and  sometimes  move  in  a 
contrary  direction,  are  implied  in  the  words  "  free  to  move." 
If  it  is  a  law  of  nature  that  bodies  tend  to  move  toward  one 
another  in  a  certain  way ;  it  is  another  and  no  less  true  law 
of  nature  that,  if  bodies  are  not  free  to  move  as  they  tend  to 
do,  either  in  consequence  of  an  obstacle,  or  of  a  contrary  im- 
pulse from  some  other  source  of  energy  than  that  to  which 
we  give  the  name  of  gravitation,  they  either  stop  still,  or  go 
another  way. 

Scientifically  speaking,  it  is  the  acme  of  absurdity  to  talk 
of  a  man  defying  the  law  of  gravitation  when  he  lifts  his  arm. 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    197 

The  general  store  of  energy  in  the  universe  working  through 
terrestrial  matter  is  doubtless  tending  to  bring  the  man's  arm 
down;  but  the  particular  fraction  of  that  energy  which  is 
working  through  certain  of  his  nervous  and  muscular  organs 
is  tending  to  drive  it  up,  and  more  energy  being  expended  on 
the  arm  in  the  upward  than  in  the  downward  direction,  the 
arm  goes  up  accordingly.  But  the  law  of  gravitation  is  no 
more  defied  in  this  case  than  when  a  grocer  throws  so  much 
sugar  into  the  empty  pan  of  his  scales  that  the  one  which  con- 
tains the  weight  kicks  the  beam. 

The  tenacity  of  the  wonderful  fallacy  that  the  laws  of  na- 
ture are  agents,  instead  of  being,  as  they  really  are,  a  mere 
record  of  experience,  upon  which  we  base  our  interpretations 
of  that  which  does  happen,  and  our  anticipation  of  that  which 
will  happen,  is  an  interesting  psychological  fact ;  and  would 
be  unintelligible  if  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  toward 
realism  were  less  strong. 

Even  at  the  present  day,  and  in  the  writings  of  men  who 
would  at  once  repudiate  scholastic  realism  in  any  form,  "  law  " 
is  often  inadvertently  employed  in  the  sense  of  cause,  just  as, 
in  common  life,  a  man  will  say  that  he  is  compelled  by  the 
law  to  do  so  and  so,  when,  in  point  of  fact,  all  he  means  is 
that  the  law  orders  him  to  do  it,  and  tells  him  what  will  hap- 
pen if  he  does  not  do  it.  We  commonly  hear  of  bodies  fall- 
ing to  the  ground  by  reason  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  whereas 
that  law  is  simply  the  record  of  the  fact  that,  according  to  all 
experience,  they  have  so  fallen  (when  free  to  move),  and  of 
the  grounds  of  a  reasonable  expectation  that  they  will  so  fall. 
If  it  should  be  worth  anybody's  while  to  seek  for  examples  of 
such  misuse  of  language  on  my  own  part,  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
he  might  not  succeed,  though  I  have  usually  been  on  my 
guard  against  such  looseness  of  expression.  If  I  am  guilty, 
I  do  penance  beforehand,  and  only  hope  that  I  may  thereby 
deter  others  from  committing  the  like  fault.  And  I  venture 
on  this  personal  observation  by  way  of  showing  that  I  have 
no  wish  to  bear  hardly  on  the  preacher  for  falling  into  an 


198  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

error  for  which  he  might  find  good  precedents.  But  it  is  one 
of  those  errors  which,  in  the  case  of  a  person  engaged  in  sci- 
entific pursuits,  does  little  harm,  because  it  is  corrected  as  soon 
as  its  consequences  become  obvious ;  while  those  who  know 
physical  science  only  by  name  are,  as  has  been  seen,  easily  led 
to  build  a  mighty  fabric  of  unrealities  on  this  fundamental 
fallacy.  In  faet,  the  habitual  use  of  the  word  "  law,"  in  the 
sense  of  an  active  thing,  is  almost  a  mark  of  pseudo-science ;  it 
characterizes  the  writings  of  those  who  have  appropriated  the 
forms  of  science  without  knowing  anything  of  its  substance. 

There  are  two  classes  of  these  people :  those  who  are  ready 
to  believe  in  any  miracle  so  long  as  it  is  guaranteed  by  eccle- 
siastical authority ;  and  those  who  are  ready  to  believe  in  any 
miracle  so  long  as  it  has  some  different  guarantee.  The  be- 
lievers in  what  are  ordinarily  called  miracles — those  who  ac- 
cept the  miraculous  narratives  which  they  are  taught  to  think 
are  essential  elements  of  religious  doctrine — are  in  the  one 
category ;  the  spirit-rappers,  table- turners,  and  all  the  other 
devotees  of  the  occult  sciences  of  our  day  are  in  the  other : 
and,  if  they  disagree  in  most  things  they  agree  in  this,  namely, 
that  they  ascribe  to  science  a  dictum  that  is  not  scientific ; 
and  that  they  endeavor  to  upset  the  dictum  thus  foisted  on 
science  by  a  realistic  argument  which  is  equally  unscientific. 

It  is  asserted,  for  example,  that,  on  a  particular  occasion, 
water  was  turned  into  wine;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
asserted  that  a  man  or  a  woman  "  levitated  "  to  the  ceiling, 
floated  about  there,  and  finally  sailed  out  by  the  window. 
And  it  is  assumed  that  the  pardonable  skepticism,  with  which 
most  scientific  men  receive  these  statements,  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  they  feel  themselves  justified  in  denying  the  possi- 
bility of  any  such  metamorphosis  of  water  or  of  any  such 
levitation,  because  such  events  are  contrary  to  the  laws  of 
nature.  So  the  question  of  the  preacher  is  triumphantly  put : 
How  do  you  know  that  there  are  not  "  higher  "  laws  of  nature 
than  your  chemical  and  physical  laws,  and  that  these  higher 
laws  may  not  intervene  and  "  wreck  "  the  latter  ? 


SCIENTIFIC   AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    199 

The  plain  answer  to  this  question  is,  Why  should  anybody 
be  called  upon  to  say  how  he  knows  that  which  he  does  not 
know?  You  are  assuming  that  laws  are  agents — efficient 
causes  of  that  which  happens — and  that  one  law  can  inter- 
fere with  another.  To  us,  that  assumption  is  as  nonsensical 
as  if  you  were  to  talk  of  a  proposition  of  Euclid  being  the 
cause  of  the  diagram  which  illustrates  it,  or  of  the  integral 
calculus  interfering  with  the  rule  of  three.  Your  question 
really  implies  that  we  pretend  to  complete  knowledge  not 
only  of  all  past  and  present  phenomena,  but  of  all  that  are 
possible  in  the  future,  and  we  leave  all  that  sort  of  thing  to 
the  adepts  of  esoteric  Buddhism.  Our  pretensions  are  in- 
finitely more  modest.  "We  have  succeeded  in  finding  out  the 
rules  of  action  of  a  little  bit  of  the  universe ;  we  call  these 
rules  "  laws  of  nature,"  not  because  anybody  knows  whether 
they  bind  nature  or  not,  but  because  we  find  it  is  obligatory 
on  us  to  take  them  into  account,  both  as  actors  under  na- 
ture, and  as  interpreters  of  nature.  We  have  any  quantity 
of  genuine  miracles  of  our  own,  and  if  you  will  furnish  us 
with  as  good  evidence  of  your  miracles  as  we  have  of  ours, 
we  shall  be  quite  happy  to  accept  them  and  to  amend  our 
expression  of  the  laws  of  nature  in  accordance  with  the  new 
facts. 

As  to  the  particular  case  adduced,  we  are  so  perfectly 
fair-minded  as  to  be  willing  to  help  your  case  as  far  as  we 
can.  You  are  quite  mistaken  in  supposing  that  anybody 
who  is  acquainted  with  the  possibilities  of  physical  science 
will  undertake  categorically  to  deny  that  water  may  be 
turned  into  wine.  Many  very  competent  judges  are  already 
inclined  to  think  that  the  bodies,  which  we  have  hitherto 
called  elementary,  are  really  composite  arrangements  of  the 
particles  of  a  uniform  primitive  matter.  Supposing  that  view 
to  be  correct,  there  would  be  no  more  theoretical  difficulty 
about  turning  water  into  alcohol,  ethereal  and  coloring  mat- 
ters, than  there  is,  at  this  present  moment,  any  practical 
difficulty  in  working  other  such  miracles ;  as  when  we  turn 


200  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

sugar  into  alcohol,  carbonic  acid,  glycerin,  and  succinic 
acid ;  or  transmute  gas-refuse  into  perfumes  rarer  than  musk 
and  dyes  richer  than  Tyrian  purple.  If  the  so-called  "  ele- 
ments," oxygen  and  hydrogen,  which  compose  water,  are  ag- 
gregates of  the  same  ultimate  particles,  or  physical  units,  as 
those  which  enter  into  the  structure  of  the  so-called  element 
"  carbon,"  it  is  obvious  that  alcohol  and  other  substances, 
composed  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  and  oxygen,  may  be  produced 
by  a  rearrangement  of  some  of  the  units  of  oxygen  and  hy- 
drogen into  the  "  element "  carbon,  and  their  synthesis  with 
the  rest  of  the  oxygen  and  hydrogen. 

Theoretically,  therefore,  we  can  have  no  sort  of  objection 
to  your  miracle.  And  our  reply  to  the  levitators  is  just  the 
same.  Why  should  not  your  friend  "  levitate  "  ?  Fish  are 
said  to  rise  and  sink  in  the  water  by  altering  the  volume  of 
an  internal  air-receptacle ;  and  there  may  be  many  ways 
science,  as  yet,  knows  nothing  of,  by  which  we,  who  live  at 
the  bottom  of  an  ocean  of  air,  may  do  the  same  thing.  Dia- 
lectic gas  and  wind  appear  to  be  by  no  means  wanting  among 
you,  and  why  should  not  long  practice  in  pneumatic  philoso- 
phy have  resulted  in  the  internal  generation  of  something  a 
thousand  times  rarer  than  hydrogen,  by  which,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  most  ordinary  natural  laws,  you  would  not 
only  rise  to  the  ceiling  and  float  there  in  quasi-angelic  post- 
ure, but  perhaps,  as  one  of  your  feminine  adepts  is  said  to 
have  done,  flit  swifter  than  train  or  telegram  to  "  still-vexed 
Bermoothes,"  and  twit  Ariel,  if  he  happens  to  be  there,  for  a 
sluggard  ?  "We  have  not  the  presumption  to  deny  the  possi- 
bility of  anything  you  affirm ;  only,  as  our  brethren  are  par- 
ticular about  evidence,  do  give  us  as  much  to  go  upon  as 
may  save  us  from  being  roared  down  by  their  inextinguish- 
able laughter. 

Enough  of  the  realism  which  clings  about  "  laws." 
There  are  plenty  of  other  exemplifications  of  its  vitality  in 
modern  science,  but  I  will  cite  only  one  of  them. 

This  is  the   conception  of  "vital  force"  which  comes 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    201 

straight  from  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle.  It  is  a  funda- 
mental proposition  of  that  philosophy  that  a  natural  object 
is  comjDosed  of  two  constituents — the  one  its  matter,  con- 
ceived as  inert  or  even,  to  a  certain  extent,  opposed  to  orderly 
and  purposive  motion ;  the  other  its  form,  conceived  as  a 
quasi-spiritual  something,  containing  or  conditioning  the 
actual  activities  of  the  body  and  the  potentiality  of  its  possi- 
ble activities. 

I  am  disposed  to  think  that  the  prominence  of  this  con- 
ception in  Aristotle's  theory  of  things  arose  from  the  cir- 
cumstance that  he  was,  to  begin  with  and  throughout  his 
life,  devoted  to  biological  studies.  In  fact  it  is  a  notion 
which  must  force  itself  upon  the  mind  of  any  one  who 
studies  biological  phenomena,  without  reference  to  general 
physics,  as  they  now  stand.  Everybody  who  observes  the 
obvious  phenomena  of  the  development  of  a  seed  into  a  tree, 
or  of  an  egg  into  an  animal,  will  note  that  a  relatively  form- 
less mass  of  matter  gradually  grows,  takes  a  definite  shar>e 
and  structure,  and,  finally,  begins  to  perform  actions  which 
contribute  toward  a  certain  end,  namely,  the  maintenance  of 
the  individual  in  the  first  place,  and  of  the  species  in  the 
second.  Starting  from  the  axiom  that  every  event  has  a 
cause,  we  have  here  the  causa  finalis  manifested  in  the  last 
set  of  phenomena,  the  causa  materialis  andformalis  in  the 
first,  while  the  existence  of  a  causa  efficiens  within  the 
seed  or  egg  and  its  product,  is  a  corollary  from  the  phenom- 
ena of  growth  and  metamorphosis,  which  proceed  in  un- 
broken succession  and  make  up  the  life  of  the  animal  or 
plant. 

Thus,  at  starting,  the  egg  or  seed  is  matter  having  a 
"  form  "  like  all  other  material  bodies.  But  this  form  has  the 
peculiarity,  in  contradistinction  to  lower  substantial  "  forms," 
that  it  is  a  power  which  constantly  works  toward  an  end  by 
means  of  living  organization. 

So  far  as  I  know,  Leibnitz  is  the  only  philosopher  (at 
the  same  time  a  man  of  science,  in  the  modern  sense,  of  the 


202  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

first  rank)  who  has  noted  that  the  modern  conception  of 
Force,  as  a  sort  of  atmosphere  enveloping  the  particles  of 
bodies,  and  having  potential  or  actual  activity,  is  simply  a 
new  name  for  the  Aristotelian  Form.*  In  modern  biology, 
up  till  within  quite  recent  times,  the  Aristotelian  conception 
held  undisputed  sway;  living  matter  was  endowed  with 
"  vital  force,"  and  that  accounted  for  everything.  Whoso- 
ever was  not  satisfied  with  that  explanation  was  treated  to 
that  very  "  plain  argument " — "  confound  you  eternally  "-— 
wherewith  Lord  Peter  overcomes  the  doubts  of  his  brothers 
in  the  Tale  of  a  Tub.  "  Materialist "  was  the  mildest  term 
applied  to  him — fortunate  if  he  escaped  pelting  with  "  infi- 
del" and  "atheist."  There  may  be  scientific  Kip  Van 
"Winkles  about,  who  still  hold  by  vital  force ;  but  among 
those  biologists  who  have  not  been  asleep  for  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  "  vital  force  "  no  longer  figures  in  the  vocabu- 
lary of  science.  It  is  a  patent  survival  of  realism ;  the  gen- 
eralization from  experience  that  all  living  bodies  exhibit 
certain  activities  of  a  definite  character  is  made  the  basis 
of  the  notion  that  every  living  body  contains  an  entity, 
"  vital  force,"  which  is  assumed  to  be  the  cause  of  those  ac- 
tivities. 

It  is  remarkable,  in  looking  back,  to  notice  to  what  an 
extent  this  and  other  survivals  of  scholastic  realism  arrested 
or,  at  any  rate,  impeded  the  application  of  sound  scientific 
principles  to  the  investigation  of  biological  phenomena. 
When  I  was  beginning  to  think  about  these  matters,  the  sci- 
entific world  was  occasionally  agitated  by  discussions  respect- 
ing the  nature  of  the  "  species  "  and  "  genera  "  of  Naturalists, 
of  a  different  order  from  the  disputes  of  a  later  time.  I 
think  most  were  agreed  that  a  "  species "  was  something 
which  existed  objectively,  somehow  or  other,  and  had  been 
created  by  a   Divine   fiat.      As  to  the  objective  reality  of 

*  "  Les  formes  des  anciens  on  Entelechies  ne  sont  autre  chose  que 
les  forces"  (Leibnitz  Lettre  au  Fere  Bouvet,  1697). 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC   REALISM.    203 

genera,  there  was  a  good  deal  of  difference  of  opinion.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  were  a  few  who  could  see  no  objective 
reality  in  anything  but  individuals,  and  looked  upon  both 
species  and  genera  as  hypostatized  universals.  As  for  my- 
self, I  seem  to  have  unconsciously  emulated  William  of  Oc- 
cam, inasmuch  as  almost  the  first  public  discourse  I  ever 
ventured  upon,  dealt  with  "Animal  Individuality,"  and  its 
tendency  was  to  fight  the  Nominalist  battle  even  in  that 
quarter. 

Kealism  appeared  in  still  stranger  forms  at  the  time  to 
which  I  refer.  The  community  of  plan  which  is  observable 
in  each  great  group  of  animals  was  hypostatized  into  a  Platonic 
idea  with  the  appropriate  name  of  "  archetype,"  and  we  were 
told,  as  a  disciple  of  Philo-Judseus  might  have  told  us,  that 
this  realistic  figment  was  "the  archetypal  light"  by  which 
Nature  has  been  guided  amid  the  "  wreck  of  worlds."  So, 
again,  another  naturalist,  who  had  no  less  earned  a  well- 
deserved  reputation  by  his  contributions  to  positive  knowl- 
edge, put  forward  a  theory  of  the  production  of  living 
things  which,  as  nearly  as  the  increase  of  knowledge  allowed, 
was  a  reproduction  of  the  doctrine  inculcated  by  the  Jewish 
Cabbala. 

Annexing  the  archetype  notion,  and  carrying  it  to  its  full 
logical  consequence,  the  author  of  this  theory  conceived  that 
the  species  of  animals  and  plants  were  so  many  incarnations 
of  the  thoughts  of  God — material  representations  of  Divine 
ideas — during  the  particular  period  of  the  world's  history  at 
which  they  existed.  But,  under  the  influence  of  the  em- 
bryological  and  palseontological  discoveries  of  modern  times, 
which  had  already  lent  some  scientific  support  to  the  revived 
ancient  theories  of  cosmical  evolution  or  emanation,  the  in- 
genious author  of  this  speculation,  while  denying  and  repudi- 
ating the  ordinary  theory  of  evolution  by  successive  modifi- 
cation of  individuals,  maintained  and  endeavored  to  prove 
the  occurrence  of  a  progressive  modification  in  the  Divine 
ideas  of  successive  epochs. 


204  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

On  the  foundation  of  a  supposed  elevation  of  organization 
in  the  whole  living  population  of  any  epoch  as  compared 
with  that  of  its  predecessor,  and  a  supposed  complete  differ- 
ence in  species  between  the  populations  of  any  two  epochs 
(neither  of  which  suppositions  has  stood  the  test  of  further 
inquiry)  the  author  of  this  speculation  based  his  conclusion 
that  the  Creator  had,  so  to  speak,  improved  upon  his 
thoughts  as  time  went  on ;  and  that,  as  each  such  amended 
scheme  of  creation  came  up,  the  embodiment  of  the  earlier 
divine  thoughts  was  swept  away  by  a  universal  catastrophe, 
and  an  incarnation  of  the  improved  ideas  took  its  place. 
Only  after  the  last  such  "  wreck  "  thus  brought  about,  did 
the  embodiment  of  a  divine  thought,  in  the  shape  of  the 
first  man,  make  its  appearance  as  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  the 
cosmogonical  process. 

I  imagine  that  Louis  Agassiz,  the  genial  backwoodsman 
of  the  science  of  my  young  days,  who  did  more  to  open  out 
new  tracks  in  the  scientific  forest  than  most  men,  would 
have  been  much  surprised  to  learn  that  he  was  preaching  the 
doctrine  of  the  Cabbala,  pure  and  simple.  According  to  this 
modification  of  Neoplatonism  by  contact  with  Hebrew  specu- 
lation, the  divine  essence  is  unknowable — without  form  or 
attribute ;  but  the  interval  between  it  and  the  world  of  sense 
is  filled  by  intelligible  entities,  which  are  nothing  but  the 
familiar  hypostatized  abstractions  of  the  realists.  These  have 
emanated,  like  immense  waves  of  light,  from  the  divine  cen- 
ter, and,  as  ten  consecutive  zones  of  Sephiroth,  form  the  uni- 
verse. The  farther  away  from  the  center,  the  more  the 
primitive  light  wanes,  until  the  periphery  ends  in  those  mere 
negations,  darkness  and  evil,  which  are  the  essence  of  mat- 
ter. On  this,  the  divine  agency  transmitted  through  the 
Sephiroth  operates  after  the  fashion  of  the  Aristotelian  forms, 
and,  at  first,  produces  the  lowest  of  a  series  of  worlds.  After 
a  certain  duration  the  primitive  world  is  demolished  and  its 
fragments  used  up  in  making  a  better ;  and  this  process  is 
repeated,  until  at  length  a  final  world,  with  man  for  its  crown 


SCIENTIFIC  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC  REALISM.    205 

and  finish,  makes  its  appearance.  It  is  needless  to  trace  the 
process  of  retrogressive  metamorphosis  by  which,  through 
the  agency  of  the  Messiah,  the  steps  of  the  process  of  evolu- 
tion here  sketched  are  retraced.  Sufficient  has  been  said  to 
prove  that  the  extremest  realism  current  in  the  philosophy  of 
the  thirteenth  century  can  be  fully  matched  by  the  specula- 
tions of  our  own  time. 


VII. 

SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 

In  the  opening  sentences  of  a  contribution  to  the  last 
number  of  this  review,  the  Duke  of  Argyll  has  favored  me 
with  a  lecture  on  the  proprieties  of  controversy,  to  which  I 
should  be  disposed  to  listen  with  more  docility  if  his  Grace's 
precepts  appeared  to  me  to  be  based  upon  rational  principles, 
or  if  his  example  were  more  exemplary. 

With  respect  to  the  latter  point,  the  Duke  has  thought  fit 
to  entitle  his  article  "  Professor  Huxley  on  Canon  Liddon," 
and  thus  forces  into  prominence  an  element  of  personality, 
which  those  who  read  the  paper  which  is  the  object  of  the 
Duke's  animadversions  will  observe  I  have  endeavored,  most 
carefully,  to  avoid.  My  criticisms  dealt  with  a  report  of  a 
sermon,  published  in  a  newspaper,  and  thereby  addressed  to 
all  the  world.  "Whether  that  sermon  was  preached  by  A  or  B 
was  not  a  matter  of  the  smallest  consequence ;  and  I  went 
out  of  my  way  to  absolve  the  learned  divine  to  whom  the  dis- 
course was  attributed,  from  the  responsibility  for  statements 
which,  for  anything  I  knew  to  the  contrary,  might  contain 
imperfect,  or  inaccurate,  representations  of  his  views.  The 
assertion  that  I  had  the  wish  or  was  beset  by  any  "  tempta- 
tion to  attack  "  Canon  Liddon  is  simply  contrary  to  fact. 

But  suppose  that  if,  instead  of  sedulously  avoiding  even 
the  appearance  of  such  attack,  I  had  thought  fit  to  take  a 
different  course;  suppose  that,  after  satisfying  myself  that 
the  eminent  clergyman  whose  name  is  paraded  by  the  Duke 
of  Argyll  had  really  uttered  the  words  attributed  to  him  from 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  207 

the  pulpit  of  St.  Paul's,  what  right  would  any  one  have  to  find 
fault  with  my  action  on  grounds  either  of  justice,  expediency, 
or  good  taste  ? 

Establishment  has  its  duties  as  well  as  its  rights.  The 
clergy  of  a  State  Church  enjoy  many  advantages  over  those  of 
unprivileged  and  unendowed  religious  persuasions;  but  they 
lie  under  a  correlative  responsibility  to  the  State,  and  to  every 
member  of  the  body  politic.  I  am  not  aware  that  any  sacred- 
ness  attaches  to  sermons.  If  preachers  stray  beyond  the  doc- 
trinal limits  set  by  lay  lawyers,  the  Privy  Council  will  see  to 
it ;  and,  if  they  think  fit  to  use  their  pulpits  for  the  promulga- 
tion of  literary,  or  historical,  or  scientific  errors,  it  is  not  only 
the  right,  but  the  duty,  of  the  humblest  layman,  who  may 
happen  to  be  better  informed,  to  correct  the  evil  effects  of 
such  perversion  of  the  opportunities  which  the  State  affords 
them  and  such  misuse  of  the  authority  which  its  support 
lends  them.  Whatever  else  it  may  claim  to  be,  in  its  relations 
with  the  State,  the  Established  Church  is  a  branch  of  the 
Civil  Service ;  and,  for  those  who  repudiate  the  ecclesiastical 
authority  of  the  clergy,  they  are  merely  civil  servants,  as  much 
responsible  to  the  English  people  for  the  proper  performance 
of  their  duties  as  any  others. 

The  Duke  of  Argyll  tells  us  that  the  "work  and  calling" 
of  the  clergy  prevent  them  from  "  pursuing  disputation  as 
others  can."  I  wonder  if  his  Grace  ever  reads  the  so-called 
religious  newspapers.  It  is  not  an  occupation  which  I  should 
commend  to  any  one  who  wishes  to  employ  his  time  profit- 
ably ;  but  a  very  short  devotion  to  this  exercise  will  suffice  to 
convince  him  that  the  "  pursuit  of  disputation,"  carried  to  a 
degree  of  acrimony  and  vehemence  unsurpassed  in  lay  con- 
troversies, seems  to  be  found  quite  compatible  with  the  "  work 
and  calling  "  of  a  remarkably  large  number  of  the  clergy. 

Finally,  it  appears  to  me  that  nothing  can  be  in  worse 
taste  than  the  assumption  that  a  body  of  English  gentlemen 
can,  by  any  possibility,  desire  that  immunity  from  criticism 
which  the  Duke  of  Argyll  claims  for  them.     Nothing  would 


208  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

be  more  personally  offensive  to  me  than  the  supposition  that 
I  shirked  criticism,  just  or  unjust,  of  any  lecture  I  ever  gave. 
I  should  be  utterly  ashamed  of  myself  if,  when  I  stood  up  as 
an  instructor  of  others,  I  had  not  taken  every  pains  to  assure 
myself  of  the  truth  of  that  which  I  was  about  to  say ;  and  I 
should  feel  myself  bound  to  be  even  more  careful  with  a  popu- 
lar assembly,  who  would  take  me  more  or  less  on  trust,  than 
with  an  audience  of  competent  and  critical  experts. 

I  decline  to  assume  that  the  standard  of  morality,  in  these 
matters,  is  lower  among  the  clergy  than  it  is  among  scientific 
men.  I  refuse  to  think  that  the  priest  who  stands  up  before 
a  congregation,  as  the  minister  and  interpreter  of  the  Divini- 
ty, is  less  careful  in  his  utterances,  less  ready  to  meet  adverse 
comment,  than  the  layman  who  comes  before  his  audience,  as 
the  minister  and  interpreter  of  nature.  Yet  what  should  we 
think  of  the  man  of  science  who,  when  his  ignorance  or  his 
carelessness  was  exposed,  whined  about  the  want  of  delicacy 
of  his  critics,  or  pleaded  his  "  work  and  calling  "  as  a  reason 
for  being  let  alone  ? 

'No  man,  nor  any  body  of  men,  is  good  enough,  or  wise 
enough,  to  dispense  with  the  tonic  of  criticism.  Nothing 
has  done  more  harm  to  the  clergy  than  the  practice,  too  com- 
mon among  laymen,  of  regarding  them,  when  in  the  pulpit, 
as  a  sort  of  chartered  libertines,  whose  divagations  are  not  to 
be  taken  seriously.  And  I  am  well  assured  that  the  distin- 
guished divine,  to  whom  the  sermon  is  attributed,  is  the  last 
person  who  would  desire  to  avail  himself  of  the  dishonoring 
protection  which  has  been  superfluously  thrown  over  him. 

So  much  for  the  lecture  on  propriety.  But  the  Duke  of 
Argyll,  to  whom  the  hortatory  style  seems  to  come  naturally, 
does  me  the  honor  to  make  my  sayings  the  subjects  of  a  series 
of  other  admonitions,  some  on  philosophical,  some  on  geologi- 
cal, some  on  biological  topics.  I  can  but  rejoice  that  the 
Duke's  authority  in  these  matters  is  not  always  employed  to 
show  that  I  am  ignorant  of  them ;  on  the  contrary,  I  meet 
with  an  amount  of  agreement,  even  of  approbation,  for  which 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO -SCIENCE.  209 

I  proffer  such  gratitude  as  may  be  due,  even  if  that  gratitude 
is  sometimes  almost  overshadowed  by  surprise. 

I  am  unfeignedly  astonished  to  find  that  the  Duke  of 
Argyll,  who  professes  to  intervene  on  behalf  of  the  preacher, 
does  really,  like  another  Balaam,  bless  me  altogether  in  re- 
spect of  the  main  issue. 

I  denied  the  justice  of  the  preacher's  ascription  to  men 
of  science  of  the  doctrine  that  miracles  are  incredible,  be- 
cause they  are  violations  of  natural  law;  and  the  Duke  of 
Argyll  says  that  he  believes  my  "  denial  to  be  well  founded. 
The  preacher  was  answering  an  objection  which  has  now 
been  generally  abandoned."  Either  the  preacher  knew  this 
or  he  did  not  know  it.  It  seems  to  me,  as  a  mere  lay  teacher, 
to  be  a  pity  that  the  "  great  dome  of  St.  Paul's  "  should  have 
been  made  to  "  echo  "  (if  so  be  that  such  stentorian  effects 
were  really  produced)  a  statement  which,  admitting  the  first 
alternative,  was  unfair,  and,  admitting  the  second,  was  ig- 
norant.* 

Having  thus  sacrificed  one  half  of  the  preacher's  argu- 
ments, the  Duke  of  Argyll  proceeds  to  make  equally  short 
work  with  the  other  half.  It  appears  that  he  fully  accepts  my 
position  that  the  occurrence  of  those  events,  which  the 
preacher  speaks  of  as  catastrophes,  is  no  evidence  of  dis- 

*  The  Duke  of  Argyll  speaks  of  tho  recent  date  of  the  demonstra- 
tion of  the  fallacy  of  the  doctrine  in  question.  "Recent"  is  a  relative, 
term,  but  I  may  mention  that  the  question  is  fully  discussed  in  my  book 
on  "  Hume  " ;  which,  if  I  may  believe  my  publishers,  has  been  read  by  a 
good  many  people  since  it  appeared  in  1879.  Moreover,  I  observe,  from 
a  note  at  page  89  of  The  Reign  of  Law,  a  work  to  which  I  shall  have 
occasion  to  advert  by  and  by,  that  the  Duke  of  Argyll  draws  attention 
to  the  circumstance  that,  so  long  ago  as  1866,  the  views  which  I  hold 
on  this  subject  were  well  known.  The  Duke,  in  fact,  writing  about  this 
time,  says,  after  quoting  a  phrase  of  mine :  "  The  question  of  miracles 
seems  now  to  be  admitted  on  all  hands  to  be  simply  a  question  of  evi- 
dence." In  science  we  think  that  a  teacher  who  ignores  views  which 
have  been  discussed  coram  populo  for  twenty  years,  is  hardly  up  to  the 

mark. 

10 


210  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

order,  inasmuch,  as  such  catastrophes  may  be  necessary  occa- 
sional consequences  of  uniform  changes.  Whence  I  con- 
clude, his  Grace  agrees  with  me,  that  the  talk  about  royal 
laws  "  wrecking  "  ordinary  laws  may  be  eloquent  metaphor, 
but  is  also  nonsense. 

And  now  comes  a  further  surprise.  After  having  given 
these  superfluous  stabs  to  the  slain  body  of  the  preacher's 
argument,  my  good  ally  remarks,  with  magnificent  calmness : 
"  So  far,  then,  the  preacher  and  the  professor  are  at  one." 
"Let  them  smoke  the  calumet."  By  all  means:  smoke 
would  be  the  most  appropriate  symbol  of  this  wonderful 
attempt  to  cover  a  retreat.  After  all,  the  Duke  has  come  to 
bury  the  preacher,  not  to  praise  him ;  only  he  makes  the 
funeral  obsequies  look  as  much  like  a  triumphal  procession 
as  possible. 

So  far  as  the  questions  between  the  preacher  and  myself 
are  concerned,  then,  I  may  feel  happy.  The  authority  of  the 
Duke  of  Argyll  is  ranged  on  my  side.  But  the  Duke  has 
raised  a  number  of  other  questions,  with  respect  to  which  I 
fear  I  shall  have  to  dispense  with  his  support — nay,  even  be 
compelled  to  differ  from  him  as  much,  or  more,  than  I  have 
done  about  his  Grace's  new  rendering  of  the  "benefit  of 
clergy." 

In  discussing  catastrophes,  the  Duke  indulges  in  state- 
ments, partly  scientific,  partly  anecdotic,  which  appear  to  me 
to  be  somewhat  misleading.  "We  are  told,  to  begin  with,  that 
Sir  Charles  LyelPs  doctrine  respecting  the  proper  mode  of 
interpreting  the  facts  of  geology  (which  is  commonly  called 
uniformitarianism)  "  does  not  hold  its  head  quite  so  high  as 
it  once  did."  That  is  great  news  indeed.  But  is  it  true  ? 
All  I  can  say  is  that  I  am  aware  of  nothing  that  has  hap- 
pened of  late  that  can  in  any  way  justify  it ;  and  my  opinion 
is,  that  the  body  of  LyelPs  doctrine,  as  laid  down  in  that 
great  work,  The  Principles  of  Geology ',  whatever  may  have 
happened  to  'its  head,  is  a  chief  and  permanent  constituent 
of  the  foundations  of  geological  science. 


SCIENCE   AND   PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  211 

But  this  question  can  not  be  advantageously  discussed, 
unless  we  take  some  pains  to  discriminate  between  the  essen- 
tial part  of  the  uniformitarian  doctrine  and  its  accessories ; 
and  it  does  not  appear  that  the  Duke  of  Argyll  has  carried 
his  studies  of  geological  philosophy  so  far  as  this  point.  For 
he  defines  uniformitarianism  to  be  the  assumption  of  the 
"extreme  slowness  and  perfect  continuity  of  all  geological 
changes." 

What  "  perfect  continuity  "  may  mean  in  this  definition, 
I  am  by  no  means  sure ;  but  I  can  only  imagine  that  it  signi- 
fies the  absence  of  any  break  in  the  course  of  natural  order 
during  the  millions  of  years,  the  lapse  of  which  is  recorded 
by  geological  phenomena. 

Is  the  Duke  of  Argyll  prepared  to  say  that  any  geologist 
of  authority,  at  the  present  day,  believes  that  there  is  the 
slightest  evidence  of  the  occurrence  of  supernatural  inter- 
vention, during  the  long  ages  of  which  the  monuments  are 
preserved  to  us  in  the  crust  of  the  earth  ?  And  if  he  is  not, 
in  what  sense  has  this  part  of  the  uniformitarian  doctrine,  as 
he  defines  it,  lowered  its  pretensions  to  represent  scientific 
truth? 

As  to  the  "  extreme  slowness  of  all  geological  changes,"  it 
is  simply  a  popular  error  to  regard  that  as,  in  any  wise,  a 
fundamental  and  necessary  dogma  of  uniformitarianism.  It 
is  extremely  astonishing  to  me  that  any  one  who  has  carefully 
studied  Lyell's  great  work  can  have  so  completely  failed  to 
appreciate  its  purport,  which  yet  is  "  writ  large  "  on  the  very 
title-page:  "The  Principles  of  Geology,  being  an  attempt  to 
explain  the  former  changes  of  the  earth'' s  surface  by  reference 
to  causes  now  in  operation."  The  essence  of  Lyell's  doctrine 
is  here  written  so  that  those  who  run  may  read ;  and  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  quickness  or  slowness  of  the  past 
changes  of  the  earth's  surface ;  except  in  so  far  as  existing 
analogous  changes  may  go  on  slowly,  and  therefore  create  a 
presumption  in  favor  of  the  slowness  of  past  changes. 

With  that  epigrammatic  force  which  characterizes  his 


212  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

style,  Buffon  wrote,  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  in 
his  famous  Theorie  de  la  Terre :  "  Pour  juger  de  ce  qui  est 
arrive,  et  me  me  de  ce  qui  arrivera,  nous  n'avons  qu'a  exam- 
iner ce  qui  arrive."  The  key  of  the  past,  as  of  the  future,  is 
to  he  sought  in  the  present,  and  only  when  known  causes  of 
change  have  been  shown  to  be  insufficient  have  we  any 
right  to  have  recourse  to  unknown  causes.  Geology  is  as 
much  a  historical  science  as  archaeology ;  and  I  apprehend 
that  all  sound  historical  investigation  rests  upon  this  axiom. 
It  underlay  all  Hutton's  work  and  animated  Lyell  and  Scrope 
in  their  successful  efforts  to  revolutionize  the  geology  of  half 
a  century  ago. 

There  is  no  antagonism  whatever,  and  there  never  was, 
between  the  belief  in  the  views  which  had  their  chief  and 
unwearied  advocate  in  Lyell  and  the  belief  in  the  occurrence 
of  catastrophes.  The  first  edition  of  Lyell's  Principles,  pub- 
lished in  1830,  lies  before  me ;  and  a  large  part  of  the  first 
volume  is  occupied  by  an  account  of  volcanic,  seismic,  and 
diluvial  catastrophes  which  have  occurred  within  the  histori- 
cal period.  Moreover,  the  author,  over  and  over  again,  ex- 
pressly draws  the  attention  of  his  readers  to  the  consistency 
of  catastrophes  with  his  doctrine. 

Notwithstanding,  therefore,  that  we  have  not  witnessed 
within  the  last  three  thousand  years  the  devastation  by  deluge 
of  a  large  continent,  yet,  as  we  may  predict  the  future  occur- 
rence of  such  catastrophes,  we  are  authorized  to  regard  them  as 
part  of  the  present  order  of  nature,  and  they  may  be  introduced 
into  geological  speculations  respecting  the  past,  provided  that 
we  do  not  imagine  them  to  have  been  more  frequent  or  general 
than  we  expect  them  to  be  in  time  to  come  (vol.  i.  p.  89). 

Again  : — 

If  we  regard  each  of  the  causes  separately,  which  we  know 
to  be  at  present  the  most  instrumental  in  remodeling  the  state 
of  the  surface,  we  shall  find  that  we  must  expect  each  to  be  in 
action  for  thousands  of  years,  without  producing  any  extensive 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  213 

alterations  in  the  habitable  surface,  and  then  to  give  rise,  during 
a  very  brief  period,  to  important  revolutions  (vol.  ii.  p.  161).* 

Lyell  quarreled  with  the  catastrophists  then,  by  no  means 
because  they  assumed  that  catastrophes  occur  and  have  oc- 
curred, but  because  they  had  got  into  the  habit  of  calling  on 
their  god  Catastrophe  to  help  them,  when  they  ought  to  have 
been  putting  their  shoulders  to  the  wheel  of  observation  of 
the  present  course  of  nature,  in  order  to  help  themselves  out 
of  their  difficulties.  And  geological  science  has  become  what 
it  is,  chiefly  because  geologists  have  gradually  accepted  Ly- 
ell's  doctrine  and  followed  his  precepts. 

So  far  as  I  know  anything  about  the  matter,  there  is  noth- 
ing that  can  be  called  proof,  that  the  causes  of  geological 
phenomena  operated  more  intensely  or  more  rapidly,  at  any 
time  between  the  older  tertiary  and  the  oldest  palaeozoic 
epochs  than  they  have  done  between  the  older  tertiary  epoch 
and  the  present  day.  And  if  that  is  so,  uniformitarianism, 
even  as  limited  by  Lyell,  f  has  no  call  to  lower  its  crest. 

*  See  also  vol.  i.  p.  460.  In  the  ninth  edition  (1853),  published 
twenty-three  years  after  the  first,  Lyell  deprives  even  the  most  careless 
reader  of  any  excuse  for  misunderstanding  him :  "  So  in  regard  to  sub- 
terranean movements,  the  theory  of  the  perpetual  uniformity  of  the 
force  which  they  exert  on  the  earth-crust  is  quite  consistent  with  the 
admission  of  their  alternate  development  and  suspension  for  indefinite 
periods  within  limited  geographical  areas  "  (p.  187). 

f  A  great  many  years  ago  (Presidential  Address  to  the  Geological 
Society,  1869)  I  ventured  to  indicate  that  which  seemed  to  me  to  be  the 
weak  point,  not  in  the  fundamental  principles  of  uniformitarianism,  but 
in  uniformitarianism  as  taught  by  Lyell.  It  lay,  to  my  mind,  in  the 
refusal  by  Hutton,  and  in  a  less  degree  by  Lyell,  to  look  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  time  recorded  by  the  stratified  rocks.  I  said :  "  This  at- 
tempt to  limit,  at  a  particular  point,  the  progress  of  inductive  and  de- 
ductive reasoning  from  the  things  which  are  to  the  things  which  were — 
this  faithlessness  to  its  own  logic,  seems  to  me  to  have  cost  unformi- 
tarianism  the  place  as  the  permanent  form  of  geological  speculation 
which  it  might  otherwise  have  held  "  (Lay  Sermons,  p.  260).  The  con- 
text shows  that  "  uniformitarianism  "  here  means  that  doctrine,  as  lim- 


214  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

But  if  the  facts  were  otherwise,  the  position  Lyell  took  up 
remains  impregnable.  He  did  not  say  that  the  geological 
operations  of  nature  were  never  more  rapid,  or  more  vast, 
than  they  are  now ;  what  he  did  maintain  is  the  very  different 
proposition  that  there  is  no  good  evidence  of  anything  of  the 
kind.  And  that  proposition  has  not  yet  been  shown  to  be 
incorrect. 

I  owe  more  than  I  can  tell  to  the  careful  study  of  the 
Principles  of  Geology  in  my  young  days ;  and,  long  before 
the  year  1856,  my  mind  was  familiar  with  the  truth  that 
"  the  doctrine  of  uniformity  is  not  incompatible  with  great 
and  sudden  changes,"  which,  as  I  have  shown,  is  taught  toti- 
dem  verbis  in  that  work.  Even  had  it  been  possible  for  me 
to  shut  my  eyes  to  the  sense  of  what  I  had  read  in  the  Prin- 
ciples, WheweH's  Philosophy  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  pub- 
lished in  1840,  a  work  with  which  I  was  also  tolerably  familiar, 
must  have  opened  them.  For  the  always  acute,  if  not  always 
profound,  author,  in  arguing  against  Lyell's  uniformitarian- 
ism,  expressly  points  out  that  it  does  not  in  any  way  contra- 
vene the  occurrence  of  catastrophes. 

With  regard  to  such  occurrences  [earthquakes,  deluges,  etc.], 
terrible  as  they  appear  at  the  time,  they  may  not  much  affect 
the  average  rate  of  change  :  there  may  be  a  cycle,  though  an 
irregular  one,  of  rapid  and  slow  change :  and  if  such  cycles  go 
on  succeeding  each  other,  we  may  still  call  the  order  of  nature 
uniform,  notwithstanding  the  periods  of  violence  which  it  in- 
volves.* 

The  reader  who  has  followed  me  through  this  brief  chap- 
ter of  the  history  of  geological  philosophy  will  probably  find 
the  following  passage  in  the  paper  of  the  Duke  of  Argyll  to 
be  not  a  little  remarkable  : — 

ited  in  application  by  Hutton  and  Lyell,  and  that  what  I  mean  by 
"  evolutionism  "  is  consistent  and  thoroughgoing  uniformitarianism. 

*  Philosophy  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  vol.  i.  p.  670.  New  edition, 
1847. 


SCIENCE  AND   PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  215 

Many  years  ago,  when  I  had  the  honor  of  being  President 
of  the  British  Association,*  I  ventured  to  point  out,  in  the  pres- 
ence and  in  the  hearing  of  that  most  distinguished  man  [Sir  C. 
Lyell]  that  the  doctrine  of  uniformity  was  not  incompatible 
with  great  and  sudden  changes,  since  cycles  of  these  and  other 
cycles  of  comparative  rest  might  well  be  constituent  parts  of 
that  uniformity  which  he  asserted.  Lyell  did  not  object  to  this 
extended  interpretation  of  his  own  doctrine,  and  indeed  expressed 
to  me  his  entire  concurrence. 

I  should  think  he  did ;  for,  as  I  have  shown,  there  was 
nothing  in  it  that  Lyell  himself  had  not  said,  six  and  twenty 
years  before,  and  enforced,  three  years  before ;  and  it  is  almost 
verbally  identical  with  the  view  of  uniformitarianism  taken 
by  Whewell,  sixteen  years  before,  in  a  work  with  which,  one 
would  think,  that  any  one  who  undertakes  to  discuss  the  phi- 
losophy of  science  should  be  familiar. 

Thirty  years  have  elapsed  since  the  beginner  of  1856  per- 
suaded himself  that  he  enlightened  the  foremost  geologist  of 
his  time,  and  one  of  the  most  acute  and  farseeing  men  of  sci- 
ence of  any  time,  as  to  the  scope  of  the  doctrines  which  the 
veteran  philosopher  had  grown  gray  in  promulgating ;  and 
the  Duke  of  Argyll's  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of  ge- 
ology has  not,  even  now,  become  sufficiently  profound  to  dis- 
sipate that  pleasant  delusion. 

If  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  guidance  in  that  branch  of  physi- 
cal science,  with  which  alone  he  has  given  evidence  of  any 
practical  acquaintance,  is  thus  unsafe,  I  may  breathe  more 
freely  in  setting  my  opinion  against  the  authoritative  deliver- 
ances of  his  Grace  about  matters  which  lie  outside  the  prov- 
ince of  geology. 

And  here  the  Duke's  paper  offers  me  such  a  wealth  of 
opportunities  that  choice  becomes  embarrassing.  I  must 
bear  in  mind  the  good  old  adage,  "  Non  multa  sed  multum." 
Tempting  as  it  would  be  to  follow  the  Duke  through  his 
labyrinthine  misunderstandings  of  the  ordinary  terminology 

*  At  Glasgow  in  1856. 


216  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  philosophy,  and  to  comment  on  the  curious  unintelligi- 
bility  which  hangs  about  his  frequent  outpourings  of  fervid 
language,  limits  of  space  oblige  me  to  restrict  myself  to  those 
points,  the  discussion  of  which  may  help  to  enlighten  the 
public  in  respect  of  matters  of  more  importance  than  the 
competence  of  my  Mentor  for  the  task  which  he  has  under- 
taken. 

I  am  not  sure  when  the  employment  of  the  wood  Law,  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  laws  of  nature,  commenced, 
but  examples  of  it  may  be  found  in  the  works  of  Bacon,  Des- 
cartes, and  Spinoza.  Bacon  employs  "  Law  "  as  the  equiva- 
lent of  "  Form,"  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  he  may  be 
responsible  for  a  good  deal  of  the  confusion  that  has  subse- 
quently arisen  ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  the  term  is  used  by 
other  authorities,  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cent- 
uries, in  any  other  sense  than  that  of  "rule"  or  "definite 
order  "  of  the  coexistence  of  things  or  succession  of  events  in 
nature.  Descartes  speaks  of  "  regies,  que  je  nomme  les  lois 
de  la  nature."  Leibnitz  says  "  loi  ou  regie  generale,"  as  if 
he  considered  the  terms  interchangeable. 

The  Duke  of  Argyll,  however,  affirms  that  the  "  law  of 
gravitation  "  as  put  forth  by  Newton  was  something  more 
than  the  statement  of  an  observed  order.  He  admits  that 
Kepler's  three  laws  "  were  an  observed  order  of  facts  and 
nothing  more."  As  to  the  law  of  gravitation,  "  it  contains 
an  element  which  Kepler's  laws  did  not  contain,  even  an  ele- 
ment of  causation,  the  recognition  of  which  belongs  to  a 
higher  category  of  intellectual  conceptions  than  that  which 
is  concerned  in  the  mere  observation  and  record  of  separate 
and  apparently  unconnected  facts."  There  is  hardly  a  line 
in  these  paragraphs  which  appears  to  me  to  be  indisputable. 
But,  to  confine  myself  to  the  matter  in  hand,  I  can  not  con- 
ceive that  any  one  who  had  taken  ordinary  pains  to  acquaint 
himself  with  the  real  nature  of  either  Kepler's  or  Newton's 
work  could  have  written  them.  That  the  labors  of  Kepler, 
of  all  men  in  the  world,  should  be  called  "  mere  observation 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  217 

and  record,"  is  truly  wonderful.  And  any  one  who  will  look 
into  the  Principle  or  the  Optics^  or  the  Letters  to  Bentley, 
will  see,  even  if  he  has  no  more  special  knowledge  of  the 
topics  discussed  than  I  have,  that  Newton  over  and  over 
again  insisted  that  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  gravitation  as 
a  physical  cause,  and  that  when  he  used  the  terms  attraction, 
force,  and  the  like,  he  employed  them,  as  he  says,  "  mathe- 
maticV  and  not  " pliysice." 

How  these  attractions  [of  gravity,  magnetism,  and  elec- 
tricity] may  be  performed,  I  do  not  here  consider.  What  I  call 
attraction  may  be  performed  by  impulse  or  by  some  other 
means  unknown  to  me.  I  use  that  word  here  to  signify  only 
in  a  general  way  any  force  by  which  bodies  tend  toward  one 
another,  whatever  be  the  cause.* 

According  to  my  reading  of  the  best  authorities  upon  the 
history  of  science,  Newton  discovered  neither  gravitation, 
nor  the  law  of  gravitation ;  nor  did  he  pretend  to  offer  more 
than  a  conjecture  as  to  the  causation  of  gravitation.  More- 
over, his  assertion  that  the  notion  of  a  body  acting  where  it 
is  not,  is  one  that  no  competent  thinker  could  entertain,  is 
antagonistic  to  the  whole  current  conception  of  attractive 
and  repulsive  forces,  and  therefore  of  "  the  attractive  force 
of  gravitation."  What,  then,  was  that  labor  of  unsurpassed 
magnitude  and  excellence  and  immortal  influence  which 
Newton  did  perform?  In  the  first  place,  Newton  defined 
the  laws,  rules,  or  observed  order  of  the  phenomena  of  mo- 
tion, which  come  under  our  daily  observation,  with  greater 
precision  than  had  been  before  attained ;  and,  by  following 
out  with  marvelous  power  and  subtlety  the  mathematical 
consequences  of  these  rules,  he  almost  created  the  modern 
science  of  pure  mechanics.  In  the  second  place,  applying 
exactly  the  same  method  to  the  explication  of  the  facts  of 
astronomy  as  that  which  was  applied  a  century  and  a  half 
later  to  the  facts  of  geology  by  Lyell,  he  set  himself  to  solve 

*  Optics,  query  31. 


218  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  following  problem.  Assuming  that  all  bodies,  free  to 
move,  tend  to  approach  one  another  as  the  earth  and  the 
bodies  on  it  do ;  assuming  that  the  strength  of  that  tendency 
is  directly  as  the  mass  and  inversely  as  the  squares  of  the  dis- 
tances; assuming  that  the  laws  of  motion,  determined  for 
terrestrial  bodies,  hold  good  throughout  the  universe  ;  assum- 
ing that  the  planets  and  their  satellites  were  created  and 
placed  at  their  observed  mean  distances,  and  that  each  re- 
ceived a  certain  impulse  from  the  Creator ;  will  the  form  of 
the  orbits,  the  varying  rates  of  motion  of  the  planets,  and 
the  ratio  between  those  rates  and  their  distances  from  the 
sun  which  must  follow  by  mathematical  reasoning  from  these 
premises,  agree  with  the  order  of  facts  determined  by  Kep- 
ler and  others,  or  not  ? 

Newton,  employing  mathematical  methods  which  are  the 
admiration  of  adepts,  but  which  no  one  but  himself  appears 
to  have  been  able  to  use  with  ease,  not  only  answered  this 
question  in  the  affirmative,  but  stayed  not  his  constructive 
genius  before  it  had  founded  modern  physical  astronomy. 

The  historians  of  mechanical  and  of  astronomical  science 
appear  to  be  agreed  that  he  was  the  first  person  who  clearly 
and  distinctly  put  forth  the  Irypothesis  that  the  phenomena 
comprehended  under  the  general  name  of  "  gravity  "  follow 
the  same  order  throughout  the  universe,  and  that  all  material 
bodies  exhibit  these  phenomena ;  so  that,  in  this  sense,  the 
idea  of  universal  gravitation  may,  doubtless,  be  properly 
ascribed  to  him. 

Newton  proved  that  the  laws  of  Kepler  were  particular 
consequences  of  the  laws  of  motion  and  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion— in  other  words,  the  reason  of  the  first  lay  in  the  two 
latter.  But  to  talk  of  the  law  of  gravitation  alone  as  the 
reason  of  Kepler's  laws,  and  still  more  as  standing  in  any 
causal  relation  to  Kepler's  laws,  is  simply  a  misuse  of  lan- 
guage. It  would  really  be  interesting  if  the  Duke  of  Argyll 
would  explain  how  he  proposes  to  set  about  showing  that  the 
elliptical  form  of  the  orbits  of  the  planets,  the  constant  area 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  219 

described  by  the  radius  vector,  and  the  proportionality  of  the 
squares  of  the  periodic  times  to  the  cubes  of  the  distances 
from  the  sun,  are  either  caused  by  the  "  force  of  gravitation  " 
or  deducible  from  the  "  law  of  gravitation."  I  conceive  that 
it  would  be  about  as  apposite  to  say  that  the  various  com- 
pounds of  nitrogen  with  oxygen  are  caused  by  chemical  at- 
traction and  deducible  from  the  atomic  theory. 

Newton  assuredly  lent  no  shadow  of  support  to  the  mod- 
ern pseudo-scientific  philosophy  which  confounds  laws  with 
causes.  I  have  not  taken  the  trouble  to  trace  out  this  com- 
monest of  fallacies  to  its  first  beginning ;  but  I  was  familiar 
with  it  in  full  bloom,  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  in  a  work 
which  had  a  great  vogue  in  its  day — the  Vestiges  of  the 
Natural  History  of  Creation — of  which  the  first  edition  was 
published  in  1844. 

It  is  full  of  apt  and  forcible  illustrations  of  pseudo-scien- 
tific realism.  Consider,  for  example,  this  gem  serene.  When 
a  boy  who  has  climbed  a  tree  looses  his  hold  of  the  branch, 
"  the  law  of  gravitation  unrelentingly  pulls  him  to  the 
ground,  and  then  he  is  hurt,"  whereby  the  Almighty  is  quite 
relieved  from  any  responsibility  for  the  accident.  Here  is 
the  "  law  of  gravitation  "  acting  as  a  cause  in  a  way  quite  in 
accordance  with  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  conception  of  it.  In 
fact,  in  the  mind  of  the  author  of  the  Vestiges,  "  laws  "  are 
existences  intermediate  between  the  Creator  and  his  works, 
like  the  "  ideas  "  of  the  Platonizers  or  the  Logos  of  the  Alex- 
andrians.* I  may  cite  a  passage  which  is  quite  in  the  vein 
of  Philo  :— 

We  have  seen  powerful  evidences  that  the  construction  of 
this  globe  and  its  associates ;  and,  inferentially,  that  of  all  the 
other  globes  in  space,  was  the  result,  not  of  any  immediate  or 
personal  exertion  on  the  part  of  the  Deity,  but  of  natural  laws 
which  are  the  expression  of  his  will.     What  is  to  hinder  our 


The  author  recognizes  this  in  his  Explanations. 


220  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

supposing  that  the  organic  creation  is  also  a  result  of  natural 
laws  which  are  in  like  manner  an  expression  of  his  will  ?  (p. 
154,  1st  edition). 

And  creation  "  operating  by  law  "  is  constantly  cited  as  re- 
lieving the  Creator  from  trouble  about  insignificant  details. 

I  am  perplexed  to  picture  to  myself  the  state  of  mind 
which  accepts  these  verbal  juggleries.  It  is  intelligible  that 
the  Creator  should  operate  according  to  such  rules  as  he 
might  think  fit  to  lay  down  for  himself  (and  therefore  ac- 
cording to  law) ;  but  that  would  leave  the  operation  of  his 
will  just  as  much  a  direct  personal  act  as  it  would  be  under 
any  other  circumstances.  I  can  also  understand  that  (as  in 
Leibnitz's  caricature  of  Newton's  views)  the  Creator  might 
have  made  the  cosmical  machine,  and,  after  setting  it  going, 
have  left  it  to  itself  till  it  needed  repair.  But  then,  by  the 
supposition,  his  personal  responsibility  would  have  been  in- 
volved in  all  that  it  did,  just  as  much  as  a  dynamiter  is  re- 
sponsible for  what  happens  when  he  has  set  his  machine 
going  and  left  it  to  explode. 

The  only  hypothesis  which  gives  a  sort  of  mad  consistency 
to  the  Vestigiarian's  views  is  the  supposition  that  laws  are  a 
kind  of  angels  or  demiurgoi,  who,  being  supplied  with  the 
Great  Architect's  plan,  were  permitted  to  settle  the  details 
among  themselves.  Accepting  this  doctrine,  the  conception 
of  royal  laws  and  plebeian  laws,  and  of  those  more  than 
Homeric  contests  in  which  the  big  laws  "  wreck  "  the  little 
ones,  becomes  quite  intelligible.  And,  in  fact,  the  honor  of 
the  paternity  of  those  remarkable  ideas  which  come  into  full 
flower  in  the  preacher's  discourse,  must,  so  far  as  my  imper- 
fect knowledge  goes,  be  attributed  to  the  author  of  the 
Vestiges. 

But  the  author  of  the  Vestiges  is  not  the  only  writer  who 
is  responsible  for  the  current  pseudo-scientific  mystifications 
which  hang  about  the  term  "  law."  When  I  wrote  my  paper 
about  "  Scientific  and  Pseudo-Scientific  Kealism,"  I  had  not 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  221 

read  a  work  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  The  Reign  of  Law, 
which,  I  believe,  has  enjoyed,  possibly  still  enjoys,  a  wide- 
spread popularity.  But  the  vivacity  of  the  Duke's  attack 
led  me  to  think  it  possible  that  criticisms  directed  elsewhere 
might  have  come  home  to  him.  And,  in  fact,  I  find  that  the 
second  chapter  of  the  work  in  question,  which  is  entitled 
"  Law ;  its  definitions,"  is,  from  my  point  of  view,  a  sort  of 
"  summa  "  of  pseudo-scientific  philosophy.  It  will  be  worth 
while  to  examine  it  in  some  detail. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  author  of  the 
Reign  of  Laiv  admits  that  "  law,"  in  many  cases,  means  noth- 
ing more  than  the  statement  of  the  order  in  which  facts  oc- 
cur, or,  as  he  says,  "  an  observed  order  of  facts"  (p.  66).  But 
his  appreciation  of  the  value  of  accuracy  of  expression  does 
not  hinder  him  from  adding,  almost  in  the  same  breath,  "  In 
this  sense  the  laws  of  nature  are  simply  those  facts  of  nature 
which  recur  accordiug  to  rule  "  (p.  66).  Thus  "  laws,"  which 
were  rightly  said  to  be  the  statement  of  an  order  of  facts  in 
one  paragraph,  are  declared  to  be  the  facts  themselves  in  the 
next. 

We  are  next  told  that,  though  it  may  be  customary  and 
permissible  to  use  "  law  "  in  the  sense  of  a  statement  of  the 
order  of  facts,  this  is  a  low  use  of  the  word ;  and  indeed,  two 
pages  further  on,  the  writer,  flatly  contradicting  himself,  alto- 
gether denies  its  admissibility. 

An  observed  order  of  facts,  to  be  entitled  to  the  rank  of  a 
law,  must  be  an  order  so  constant  and  uniform  as  to  indicate 
necessity,  and  necessity  can  only  arise  out  of  the  action  of  some 
compelling  force  (p.  68). 

This  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  singular  propositions 
that  I  have  ever  met  with  in  a  professedly  scientific  work, 
and  its  rarity  is  embellished  by  another  direct  self-contradic- 
tion which  it  implies.  For  on  the  preceding  page  (67),  when 
the  Duke  of  Argyll  is  speaking  of  the  laws  of  Kepler,  which 
he  admits  to  be  laws,  and  which  are  types  of  that  which  men 


222  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  science  understand  by  "  laws,"  he  says  that  they  are  "  sim- 
ply and  purely  an  order  of  facts."  Moreover,  he  adds  :  "  A 
very  large  proportion  of  the  laws  of  every  science  are  laws  of 
this  kind  and  in  this  sense." 

If,  according  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  admission,  law  is 
understood,  in  this  sense,  thus  widely  and  constantly  by 
scientific  authorities,  where  is  the  justification  for  his  un- 
qualified assertion  that  such  statements  of  the  observed  order 
of  facts  are  not  "  entitled  to  the  rank  "  of  laws  ? 

But  let  us  examine  the  consequences  of  the  really  interest- 
ing proposition  I  have  just  quoted.  I  presume  that  it  is  a 
law  of  nature  that  "  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance  be- 
tween two  points."  This  law  affirms  the  constant  association 
of  a  certain  fact  of  form  with  a  certain  fact  of  dimension. 
Whether  the  notion  of  necessity  which  attaches  to  it  has  an  a 
priori  or  an  a  posteriori  origin  is  a  question  not  relevant  to 
the  present  discussion.  But  I  would  beg  to  be  informed,  if 
it  is  necessary,  where  is  the  "  compelling  force  "  out  of  which 
the  necessity  arises ;  and  further,  if  it  is  not  necessary,  wheth- 
er it  loses  the  character  of  a  law  of  nature  ? 

I  take  it  to  be  a  law  of  nature,  based  on  unexceptionable 
evidence,  that  the  mass  of  matter  remains  unchanged,  what- 
ever chemical  or  other  modifications  it  may  undergo.  This 
law  is  one  of  the  foundations  of  chemistry.  But  it  is  by  no 
means  necessary.  It  is  quite  possible  to  imagine  that  the 
mass  of  matter  should  vary  according  to  circumstances,  as  we 
know  its  weight  does.  Moreover,  the  determination  of  the 
"  force  "  which  makes  mass  constant  (if  there  is  any  intelligi- 
bility in  that  form  of  words)  would  not,  so  far  as  I  can  see, 
confer  any  more  validity  on  the  law  than  it  has  now. 

There  is  a  law  of  nature,  so  well-vouched  by  experience, 
that  all  mankind,  from  pure  logicians  in  search  of  examples 
to  parish  sextons  in  search  of  fees,  confide  in  it.  This  is  the 
law  that  "  all  men  are  mortal."  It  is  simply  a  statement  of 
the  observed  order  of  facts  that  all  men  sooner  or  later  die. 
I  am  not  acquainted  with  any  law  of  nature  which  is  more 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  223 

"  constant  and  uniform  "  than  this.  But  will  any  one  tell 
me  that  death  is  "necessary"?  Certainly  there  is  no  a  pri- 
ori necessity  in  the  case,  for  various  men  have  been  imagined 
to  be  immortal.  And  I  should  be  glad  to  be  informed  of  any 
"  necessity  "  that  can  be  deduced  from  biological  considera- 
tions. It  is  quite  conceivable,  as  has  recently  been  pointed 
out,  that  some  of  the  lowest  forms  of  life  may  be  immortal, 
after  a  fashion.  However  this  may  be,  I  would  further  ask, 
supposing  "  all  men  are  mortal "  to  be  a  real  law  of  nature, 
where  and  what  is  that  to  which,  with  any  propriety,  the  title 
of  "  compelling  force  "  of  the  law  can  be  given  ? 

On  page  69,  the  Duke  of  Argyll  asserts  that  the  law  of 
gravitation  "  is  a  law  in  the  sense,  not  merely  of  a  rule,  but  of 
a  cause."  But  this  revival  of  the  teaching  of  the  Vestiges  has 
already  been  examined  and  disposed  of ;  and  when  the  Duke 
of  Argyll  states  that  the  "  observed  order  "  which  Kepler  had 
discovered  was  simply  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  force  of 
"gravitation,"  I  need  not  recapitulate  the  evidence  which 
proves  such  a  statement  to  be  wholly  fallacious.  But  it  may 
be  useful  to  say,  once  more,  that,  at  this  present  moment,  no- 
body knows  anything  about  the  existence  of  a  "  force "  of 
gravitation  apart  from  the  fact ;  that  Newton  declared  the 
ordinary  notion  of  such  force  to  be  inconceivable ;  that  vari- 
ous attempts  have  been  made  to  account  for  the  order  of  facts 
we  call  gravitation,  without  recourse  to  the  notion  of  attractive 
force ;  that,  if  such  a  force  exists,  it  is  utterly  incompetent  to 
account  for  Kepler's  laws,  without  taking  into  the  reckoning 
a  great  number  of  other  considerations ;  and,  finally,  that  all 
we  know  about  the  "  force  "  of  gravitation,  or  any  other  so- 
called  "  force,"  is  that  it  is  a  name  for  the  hypothetical  cause 
of  an  observed  order  of  facts. 

Thus,  when  the  Duke  of  Argyll  says :  "  Force,  ascertained 
according  to  some  measure  of  its  operation — this  is  indeed 
one  of  the  definitions,  but  only  one,  of  a  scientific  law  "  (p. 
71),  I  reply  that  it  is  a  definition  which  must  be  repudiated 
by  every  one  who  possesses  an  adequate  acquaintance  with 


224  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

\ 
either  the  facts,  or  the  philosophy,  of  science  and  relegated  to 

the  limbo  of  pseudo-scientific  fallacies.  If  the  human  mind 
had  never  entertained  this  notion  of  "  force,"  nay,  if  it  sub- 
stituted bare  invariable  succession  for  the  ordinary  notion  of 
causation,  the  idea  of  law,  as  the  expression  of  a  constantly 
observed  order,  which  generates  a  corresponding  intensity  of 
expectation  in  our  minds,  would  have  exactly  the  same  value, 
and  play  its  part  in  real  science,  exactly  as  it  does  now. 

It  is  needless  to  extend  further  the  present  excursus  on 
the  origin  and  history  of  modern  pseu  do -science.  Under 
such  high  patronage  as  it  has  enjoyed,  it  has  grown  and 
flourished  until,  nowadays,  it  is  becoming  somewhat  rampant. 
It  has  its  weekly  "  Ephemerides,"  in  which  every  new  pseudo- 
scientific  mare's-nest  is  hailed  and  belauded  with  the  uncon- 
scious unfairness  of  ignorance ;  and  an  army  of  "  reconcilers," 
enlisted  in  its  service,  whose  business  seems  to  be  to  mix  the 
black  of  dogma  and  the  white  of  science  into  the  neutral  tint 
of  what  they  call  liberal  theology. 

I  remember  that,  not  long  after  the  publication  of  the 
■  Vestiges,  a  shrewd  and  sarcastic  countryman  of  the  author 
defined  it  as  "  cauld  kail  made  het  again."  A  cynic  might 
find  amusement  in  the  reflection  that,  at  the  present  time, 
the  principles  and  the  methods  of  the  much-vilified  Yes- 
tigiarian  are  being  "made  het  again";  and  are  not  only 
"  echoed  by  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,"  but  thundered  from  the 
castle  of  Inverary.  But  my  turn  of  mind  is  not  cynical,  and 
I  can  but  regret  the  waste  of  time  and  energy  bestowed  on 
the  endeavor  to  deal  with  the  most  difficult  problems  of 
science,  by  those  who  have  neither  undergone  the  discipline, 
nor  possess  the  information,  which  are  indispensable  to  the 
successful  issue  of  such  an  enterprise. 

I  have  already  had  occasion  to  remark  that  the  Duke  of 
Argyll's  views  of  the  conduct  of  controversy  are  different 
from  mine;  and  this  much-to-be-lamented  discrepancy  be- 
comes yet  more  accentuated  when  the  Duke  reaches  biologi- 
cal topics.     Anything  that  was  good  enough  for  Sir  Charles 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  225 

Lyell,  in  his  department  of  study,  is  certainly  good  enough 
for  me  in  mine ;  and  I  by  no  means  demur  to  being  pedagog- 
ically  instructed  about  a  variety  of  matters  with  which  it  has 
been  the  business  of  my  life  to  try  to  acquaint  myself.  But 
the  Duke  of  Argyll  is  not  content  with  favoring  me  with  his 
opinions  about  my  own  business ;  he  also  answers  for  mine ; 
and,  at  that  point,  really  the  worm  must  turn.  I  am  told 
that  "  no  one  knows  better  than  Professor  Huxley  "  a  variety 
of  things  which  I  really  do  not  know ;  and  I  am  said  to  be  a 
disciple  of  that  "  Positive  Philosophy "  which  I  have,  over 
and  over  again,  publicly  repudiated  in  language  which  is  cer- 
tainly not  lacking  in  intelligibility,  whatever  may  be  its  other 
defects. 

I  am  told  that  I  have  been  amusing  myself  with  a  "  meta- 
physical exercitation  or  logomachy  "  (may  I  remark  incident- 
ally that  these  are  not  quite  convertible  terms  ?),  when  to  the 
best  of  my  belief,  I  have  been  trying  to  expose  a  process  of 
mystification,  based  upon  the  use  of  scientific  language  by 
writers  who  exhibit  no  sign  of  scientific  training,  of  accurate 
scientific  knowledge,  or  of  clear  ideas  respecting  the  philoso- 
phy of  science,  which  is  doing  very  serious  harm  to  the 
public.  Naturally  enough,  they  take  the  lion's  skin  of  scien- 
tific phraseology  for  evidence  that  the  voice  which  issues 
from  beneath  it  is  the  voice  of  science,  and  I  desire  to  relieve 
them  from  the  consequences  of  their  error. 

The  Duke  of  Argyll  asks,  apparently  with  sorrow  that  it 
should  be  his  duty  to  subject  me  to  reproof : — 

What  shall  we  say  of  a  philosophy  which  confounds  the  or- 
ganic with  the  inorganic,  and  refusing  to  take  note  of  a  differ- 
ence so  profound,  assumes  to  explain  under  one  common 
abstraction,  the  movements  due  to  gravitation  and  the  move- 
ments due  to  the  mind  of  man  ? 

To  which  I  may  fitly  reply  by  another  question  :  What  shall 
we  say  to  a  controversialist  who  attributes  to  the  subject  of 
his  attack  opinions  which  are  notoriously  not  his ;  and  ex- 


226  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

presses  himself  in  such  a  manner  that  it  is  obvious  he  is 
unacquainted  with  even  the  rudiments  of  that  knowledge 
which  is  necessary  to  the  discussion  into  which  he  has 
rushed  ? 

What  line  of  my  writing  can  the  Duke  of  Argyll  produce 
which  confounds  the  organic  with  the  inorganic  ? 

As  to  the  latter  half  of  the  paragraph,  I  have  to  confess  a 
doubt  whether  it  has  any  definite  meaning.  But  I  imagine 
that  the  Duke  is  alluding  to  my  assertion  that  the  law  of 
gravitation  is  nowise  "  suspended  "  or  "  defied  "  when  a  man 
lifts  his  arm ;  but  that,  under  such  circumstances,  part  of  the 
store  of  energy  in  the  universe  operates  on  the  arm  at  a 
mechanical  advantage  as  against  the  operation  of  another 
part.  I  was  simple  enough  to  think  that  no  one  who  had 
as  much  knowledge  of  physiology  as  is  to  be  found  in  an 
elementary  primer,  or  who  had  ever  heard  of  the  greatest 
physical  generalization  of  modern  times — the  doctrine  of  the 
conservation  of  energy — would  dream  of  doubting  my  state- 
ment ;  and  I  was  further  simple  enough  to  think  that  no  one 
who  lacked  these  qualifications  would  feel  tempted  to  charge 
me  with  error.  It  appears  that  my  simplicity  is  greater  than 
my  powers  of  imagination. 

The  Duke  of  Argyll  may  not  be  aware  of  the  fact,  but  it 
is  nevertheless  true,  that  when  a  man's  arm  is  raised,  in 
sequence  to  that  state  of  consciousness  we  call  a  volition,  the 
volition  is  not  the  immediate  cause  of  the  elevation  of  the 
arm.  On  the  contrary,  that  operation  is  effected  by  a  certain 
change  of  form,  technically  known  as  "  contraction  "  in  sun- 
dry masses  of  flesh,  technically  known  as  muscles,  which  are 
fixed  to  the  bones  of  the  shoulder  in  such  a  manner  that,  if 
these  muscles  contract,  they  must  raise  the  arm.  Now  each 
of  these  muscles  is  a  machine  comparable,  in  a  certain  sense, 
to  one  of  the  donkey-engines  of  a  steamship,,  but  more  com- 
plete, inasmuch  as  the  source  of  its  ability  to  change  its  form 
or  contract,  lies  within  itself.  Every  time  that,  by  contract- 
ing, the  muscle  does  work,  such  as  that  involved  in  raising 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  227 

the  arm,  more  or  less  of  the  material  which  it  contains 
is  used  up,  just  as  more  or  less  of  the  fuel  of  a  steam-engine 
is  used  up,  when  it  does  work.  And  I  do  not  think  there 
is  a  doubt  in  the  mind  of  any  competent  physicist  or  physiolo- 
gist that  the  work  done  in  lifting  the  weight  of  the  arm  is 
the  mechanical  equivalent  of  a  certain  proportion  of  the 
energy  set  free  by  the  molecular  changes  which  take  place 
in  the  muscle.  It  is  further  a  tolerably  well-based  belief  that 
this,  and  all  other  forms  of  energy,  are  mutually  convertible ; 
and,  therefore,  that  they  all  come  under  that  general  law  or 
statement  of  the  order  of  facts,  called  the  conservation  of 
energy.  And,  as  that  certainly  is  an  abstraction,  so  the  view 
which  the  Duke  of  Argyll  thinks  so  extremely  absurd  is 
really  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  physiology.  But  this  Re- 
view is  hardly  an  appropriate  place  for  giving  instruction  in 
the  elements  of  that  science,  and  I  content  myself  with 
recommending  the  Duke  of  Argyll  to  devote  some  study  to 
Book  II.  chap.  v.  section  4  of  my  friend  Dr.  Foster's  excel- 
lent text-book  of  Physiology  (1st  edition,  1877,  p.  321),  which 
begins  thus : — 

Broadly  speaking,  the  animal  body  is  a  machine  for  convert- 
ing potential  into  actual  energy.  The  potential  energy  is 
supplied  by  the  food ;  this  the  metabolism  of  the  body  converts 
into  the  actual  energy  of  heat  and  mechanical  labor. 

There  is  no  more  difficult  problem  in  the  world  than  that 
of  the  relation  of  the  state  of  consciousness,  termed  volition, 
to  the  mechanical  work  which  frequently  follows  upon  it. 
But  no  one  can  even  comprehend  the  nature  of  the  problem, 
who  has  not  carefully  studied  the  long  series  of  modes  of 
motion  which,  without  a  break,  connect  the  energy  which 
does  that  work  with  the  general  store  of  energy.  The  ulti- 
mate form  of  the  problem  is  this :  Have  we  any  reason  to 
believe  that  a  feeling,  or  state  of  consciousness,  is  capable 
of  directly  effecting  the  motion  of  even  the  smallest  conceiv- 
able molecule  of  matter  ?    Is  such  a  thing  even  conceivable  ? 


228  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

If  we  answer  these  questions  in  the  negative,  it  follows  that 
volition  may  be  a  sign,  but  can  not  be  a  cause,  of  bodily 
motion.  If  we  answer  them  in  the  affirmative,  then  states  of 
consciousness  become  undistinguishable  from  material  things ; 
for  it  is  the  essential  nature  of  matter  to  be  the  vehicle  or 
subtratum  of  mechanical  energy. 

There  is  nothing  new  in  all  this.  I  have  merely  put  into 
modern  language  the  issue  raised  by  Descartes  more  than 
two  centuries  ago.  The  philosophies  of  the  Occasion alists, 
of  Spinoza,  of  Malebranche,  of  modern  idealism  and  modern 
materialism,  have  all  grown  out  of  the  controversies  which 
Cartesianism  evoked.  Of  all  this  the  pseudo-science  of  the 
present  time  appears  to  be  unconscious ;  otherwise  it  would 
hardly  content  itself  with  "  making  het  again  "  the  pseudo- 
science  of  the  past. 

In  the  course  of  these  observations  I  have  already  had 
occasion  to  express  my  appreciation  of  the  copious  and 
perfervid  eloquence  which  enriches  the  Duke  of  Argyll's 
pages.  I  am  almost  ashamed  that  a  constitutional  insensi- 
bility to  the  Sirenian  charms  of  rhetoric  has  permitted  me, 
in  wandering  through  these  flowery  meads,  to  be  attracted, 
almost  exclusively,  to  the  bare  places  of  fallacy  and  the  stony 
grounds  of  deficient  information,  which  are  disguised,  though 
not  concealed,  by  these  floral  decorations.  But,  in  his .  con- 
cluding sentences,  the  Duke  soars  into  a  Tyrtasan  strain 
which  roused  even  my  dull  soul. 

It  was  high  time,  indeed,  that  some  revolt  should  be  raised 
against  that  Keign  of  Terror  which  had  come  to  be  established 
in  the  scientific  world  under  the  abuse  of  a  great  name.  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  has  not  joined  this  revolt  openly,  for  as  yet, 
indeed,  it  is  only  beginning  to  raise  its  head.  But  more  than 
once — and  very  lately — he  has  uttered  a  warning  voice  against 
the  shallow  dogmatism  that  has  provoked  it.  The  time  is 
coming  when  that  revolt  will  be  carried  further.  Higher  inter- 
pretations will  be  established.  Unless  I  am -much  mistaken, 
they  are  already  coming  in  sight  (p.  339). 


SCIENCE  AND  PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  229 

I  have  been  living  very  much  out  of  the  world  for  the 
last  two  or  three  years,  and  when  I  read  this  denunciatory 
outburst,  as  of  one  filled  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy,  I  said  to 
myself,  "  Mercy  upon  us,  what  has  happened  ?  Can  it  be 
that  X.  and  Y.  (it  would  be  wrong  to  mention  the  names  of 
the  vigorous  young  friends  which  occurred  to  me)  are 
playing  Danton  and  Kobespierre ;  and  that  a  guillotine  is 
erected  in  the  courtyard  of  Burlington  House  for  the  benefit 
of  all  anti-Darwinian  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society  ?  Where 
are  the  secret  conspirators  against  this  tyranny,  whom  I  am 
supposed  to  favor,  and  yet  not  have  the  courage  to  join 
openly?  And  to  think  of  my  poor  oppressed  friend,  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  'compelled  to  speak  with  bated  breath'  (p. 
338)  certainly  for  the  first  time  in  my  thirty-odd  years'  ac- 
quaintance with  him  !  "  My  alarm  and  horror  at  the  sup- 
position that,  while  I  had  been  fiddling  (or  at  any  rate 
physicking),  my  beloved  Eome  had  been  burning,  in  this 
fashion,  may  be  imagined. 

I  am  sure  the  Duke  of  Argyll  will  be  glad  to  hear  that 
the  anxiety  he  created  was  of  extremely  short  duration.  It  is 
my  privilege  to  have  access  to  the  best  sources  of  informa- 
tion, and  nobody  in  the  scientific  world  can  tell  me  anything 
about  either  the  u  Reign  of  Terror  "  or  "  the  Revolt."  In 
fact,  the  scientific  world  laughs  most  indecorously  at  the 
notion  of  the  existence  of  either ;  and  some  are  so  lost  to 
the  sense  of  the  scientific  dignity,  that  they  descend  to  the 
use  of  transatlantic  slang,  and  call  it  a  "  bogus  scare.  "  As  to 
my  friend  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  I  have  every  reason  to  know 
that,  in  the  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution,  he  has  said  exactly 
what  was  in  his  mind,  without  any  particular  deference  to 
the  opinions  of  the  person  whom  he  is  pleased  to  regard  as 
his  most  dangerous  critic  and  Devil's  Advocate- General,  and 
still  less  of  any  one  else. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  Duke  of  Argyll  pictures  him- 
self as  the  Tallien  of  this  imaginary  revolt  against  a  no  less 
imaginary  Reign  of  Terror     But  if  so,  I  most  respectfully 


230  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

but  firmly  decline  to  join  his  forces.  It  is  only  a  few  weeks 
since  I  happened  to  read  over  again  the  first  article  which  I 
ever  wrote  (now  twenty-seven  years  ago)  on  the  Origin  of 
Species,  and  I  found  nothing  that  I  wished  to  modify  in  the 
opinons  that  are  there  expressed,  though  the  subsequent  vast 
accumulation  of  evidence  in  favor  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views 
would  give  me  much  to  add.  As  is  the  case  with  all  new 
doctrines,  so  with  that  of  Evolution,  the  enthusiasm  of  ad- 
vocates has  sometimes  tended  to  degenerate  into  fanaticism  ; 
and  mere  speculation  has,  at  times,  threatened  to  shoot 
beyond  its  legitimate  bounds.  I  have  occasionally  thought 
it  wise  to  warn  the  more  adventurous  spirits  among  us 
against  these  dangers,  in  sufficiently  plain  language ;  and  I 
have  sometimes  jestingly  said  that  I  expected,  if  I  lived  long 
enough,  to  be  looked  on  as  a  reactionary  by  some  of  my  more 
ardent  friends.  But  nothing  short  of  midsummer  madness 
can  account  for  the  fiction  that  I  am  waiting  till  it  is  safe  to 
join  openly  a  revolt,  hatched  by  some  person  or  persons  un- 
known, against  an  intellectual  movement  with  which  I  am  in 
the  most  entire  and  hearty  sympathy.  It  is  a  great  many 
years  since,  at  the  outset  of  my  career,  I  had  to  think 
seriously  what  life  had  to  offer  that  was  worth  having.  I 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  chief  good,  for  me,  was 
freedom  to  learn,  think,  and  say  what  I  pleased,  when  I 
pleased.  I  have  acted  on  that  conviction,  and  have  availed 
myself  of  the  "  rara  temporum  f elicitas  ubi  sentire  quae  velis, 
et  quae  sentias  dicere  licet,''  which  is  now  enjoyable,  to  the 
best  of  my  ability ;  and  though  strongly,  and  perhaps  wisely, 
warned  that  I  should  probably  come  to  grief,  I  am  entire- 
ly satisfied  with  the  results  of  the  line  of  action  I  have 
adopted. 

My  career  is  at  an  end.     I  have — 

Warmed  both  hands  before  the  fire  of  life ; 

and  nothing  is  left  me,  before  I  depart,  but  to  help,  or  at 
any  rate  to  abstain  from  hindering,  the  younger  generation 


SCIENCE  AND   PSEUDO-SCIENCE.  231 

of  men  of  science  in  doing  better  service  to  the  cause  we 
have  at  heart  than  I  have  been  able  to  render. 

And  yet,  forsooth,  I  am  supposed  to  be  waiting  for  the 
signal  of  "revolt,"  which  some  fiery  spirits  among  these 
young  men  are  to  raise  before  I  dare  express  my  real  opinions 
concerning  questions  about  which  we  older  men  had  to  fight, 
in  the  teeth  of  fierce  public  opposition  and  obloquy — of  some- 
thing which  might  almost  justify  even  the  grandiloquent 
epithet  of  a  Reign  of  Terror — before  our  excellent  successors 
had  left  school. 

It  would  appear  that  the  spirit  of  pseudo-science  has  im- 
pregnated even  the  imagination  of  the  Duke  of  Argyll.  The 
scientific  imagination  always  restrains  itself  within  the  limits 
of  probability. 


VIII. 

AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY. 

If  there  is  any  truth  in  the  old  adage  that  a  burnt  child 
dreads  the  fire,  I  ought  to  be  very  loath  to  touch  a  sermon, 
while  the  memory  of  what  befell  me  on  a  recent  occasion, 
possibly  not  yet  forgotten  by  the  readers  of  this  Review,  is 
uneffaced.  But  I  suppose  that  even  the  distinguished  cen- 
sor of  that  unheard-of  audacity  to  which  not  even  the  news- 
paper report  of  a  sermon  is  sacred,  can  hardly  regard  a  man 
of  science  as  either  indelicate  or  presumptuous,  if  he  vent- 
ures to  offer  some  comments  upon  three  discourses,  specially 
addressed  to  the  great  assemblage  of  men  of  science  which 
recently  gathered  at  Manchester,  by  three  bishops  of  the 
State  Church.  On  my  return  to  England  not  long  ago,  I 
found  a  pamphlet  *  containing  a  version,  which  I  presume 
to  be  authorized,  of  these  sermons,  among  the  huge  mass  of 
letters  and  papers  which  had  accumulated  during  two  months5 
absence  ;  and  I  have  read  them  not  only  with  attentive  in- 
terest but  with  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  which  is  quite  new  to 
me  as  a  result  of  hearing,  or  reading,  sermons.  These^  ex- 
cellent discourses,  in  fact,  appear  to  me  to  signalize  a  new 
departure  in  the  course  adopted  by  theology  toward  science, 
and  to  indicate  the  possibility  of  bringing  about  an  honor- 
able modus  vivendi  between  the  two.     How  far  the  three 

*  "  The  Advance  of  Science."  Three  sermons  preached  in  Man- 
chester Cathedral  on  Sunday,  September  4,  1887,  during  the  meeting  of 
the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  by  the  Bishop 
of  Carlisle,  the  Bishop  of  Bedford,  and  the  Bishop  of  Manchester. 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  233 

bishops  speak  as  accredited  representatives  of  the  Church  is 
a  question  to  be  considered  by  and  by.  Most  assuredly,  I 
am  not  authorized  to  represent  any  one  but  myself.  But  I 
suppose  that  there  must  be  a  good  many  people  in  the 
Church  of  the  bishops'  way  of  thinking ;  and  I  have  reason 
to  believe  that,  in  the  ranks  of  science,  there  are  a  good 
many  persons  who,  more  or  less,  share  my  views.  And  it  is 
to  these  sensible  people  on  both  sides,  as  the  bishops  and  I  must 
needs  think  those  who  agree  with  us,  that  my  present  obser- 
vations are  addressed.  They  will  probably  be  astonished  to 
learn  how  insignificant,  in  principle,  their  differences  are. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  the  discourses  of  the  three  prel- 
ates without  being  impressed  by  the  knowledge  which  they 
display,  and  by  the  spirit  of  equity,  I  might  say  of  generosity, 
toward  science  which  pervades  them.  There  is  no  trace  of 
that  tacit  or  open  assumption  that  the  rejection  of  theologi- 
cal dogmas,  on  scientific  grounds,  is  due  to  moral  perversity, 
which  is  the  ordinary  note  of  ecclesiastical  homilies  on  this 
subject,  and  which  makes  them  look  so  supremely  silly  to  men 
whose  lives  have  been  spent  in  wrestling  with  these  ques- 
tions. There  is  no  attempt  to  hide  away  real  stumbling- 
blocks  under  rhetorical  stucco ;  no  resort  to  the  tu  quoque 
device  of  setting  scientific  blunders  against  theological  er- 
rors ;  no  suggestion  that  an  honest  man  may  keep  contradic- 
tory beliefs  in  separate  pockets  of  his  brain;  no  question 
that  the  method  of  scientific  investigation  is  valid,  whatever 
the  results  to  which  it  may  lead ;  and  that  the  search  after 
truth,  and  truth  only,  ennobles  the  searcher  and  leaves  no 
doubt  that  his  life,  at  any  rate,  is  worth  living.  The  Bishop 
of  Carlisle  declares  himself  pledged  to  the  belief  that  "  the 
advancement  of  science,  the  progress  of  human  knowledge, 
is  in  itself  a  worthy  aim  of  the  greatest  effort  of  the  greatest 
minds." 

How  often  was  it  my  fate,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  to 
see  the  whole  artillery  of  the  pulpit  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  its  supporters!  Any  one  un- 
11 


234  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

accustomed  to  the  amenities  of  ecclesiastical  controversy 
would  have  thought  we  were  too  wicked  to  be  permitted  to 
live.  But  let  us  hear  the  Bishop  of  Bedford.  After  a 
perfectly  frank  statement  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and 
some  of  its  obvious  consequences,  that  learned  prelate  pleads, 
with  all  earnestness,  against 

a  hasty  denunciation  of  what  may  be  proved  to  have  at  least 
some  elements  of  truth  in  it,  a  contemptuous  rejection  of  theo- 
ries which  we  may  some  day  learn  to  accept  as  freely  and  with 
as  little  sense  of  inconsistency  with  God's  word  as  we  now  ac- 
cept the  theory  of  the  earth's  motion  round  the  sun,  or  the 
long  duration  of  the  geological  epochs  (p.  28). 

I  do  not  see  that  the  most  convinced  evolutionist  could  ask 
any  one,  whether  cleric  or  layman,  to  say  more  than  this ;  in 
fact,  I  do  not  think  that  any  one  has  a  right  to  say  more, 
with  respect  to  any  question  about  which  two  opinions  can 
be  held,  than  that  his  mind  is  perfectly  open  to  the  force  of 
evidence. 

There  is  another  portion  of  the  Bishop  of  Bedford's  ser- 
mon which  I  think  will  be  warmly  appreciated  by  all  honest 
and  clear-headed  men.  He  repudiates  the  views  of  those 
who  say  that  theology  and  science 

occupy  wholly  different  spheres,  and  need  in  no  way  intermed- 
dle with  each  other.  They  revolve,  as  it  were,  in  different 
planes,  and  so  never  meet.  Thus  we  may  pursue  scientific 
studies  with  the  utmost  freedom  and,  at  the  same  time,  may 
pay  the  most  reverent  regard  to  theology,  having  no  fears  of 
collision,  because  allowing  no  points  of  contact  (p.  29). 

Surely  every  unsophisticated  mind  will  heartily  concur 
with  the  Bishop's  remark  upon  this  convenient  refuge  for 
the  descendants  of  Mr.  Facing-both-ways.  "I  have  never 
been  able  to  understand  this  position,  though  I  have  often 
seen  it  assumed."  Nor  can  any  demurrer  be  sustained  when 
the  Bishop  proceeds  to  point  out  that  there  are,  and  must  be, 
various  points  of  contact  between   theological  and  natural 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  235 

science,  and  therefore  that  it  is  foolish  to  ignore  or  deny  the 
existence  of  as  many  dangers  of  collision. 

Finally,  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  freely  admits  the  force 
of  the  objections  which  have  been  raised,  on  scientific 
grounds,  to  prayer,  and  attempts  to  turn  them  by  arguing 
that  the  proper  objects  of  prayer  are  not  physical  but  spirit- 
ual. He  tells  us  that  natural  accidents  and  moral  misfor- 
tunes are  not  to  be  taken  for  moral  judgments  of  God; 
he  admits  the  propriety  of  the  application  of  scientific  meth- 
ods to  the  investigation  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  religions ; 
and  he  is  as  ready  to  recognize  the  process  of  evolution  there, 
as  in  the  physical  world.  Mark  the  following  striking 
passage : — 

And  how  utterly  all  the  common  objections  to  Divine  reve- 
lation vanish  away  when  they  are  set  in  the  light  of  this 
theory  of  a  spiritual  progression.  Are  we  reminded  that  there 
prevailed,  in  those  earlier  days,  views  of  the  nature  of  God  and 
man,  of  human  life  and  Divine  Providence,  which  we  now  find 
to  be  untenable  ?  That,  we  answer,  is  precisely  what  the  theory 
of  development  presupposes.  If  early  views  of  religion  and 
morality  had  not  been  imperfect,  where  had  been  the  develop- 
ment ?  If  symbolical  visions  and  mythical  creations  had  found 
no  place  in  the  early  Oriental  expression  of  Divine  truth,  where 
had  been  the  development  ?  The  sufficient  answer  to  ninety- 
nine  out  of  a  hundred  of  the  ordinary  objections  to  the  Bible, 
as  the  record  of  a  divine  education  of  our  race,  is  asked  in  that 
one  word— development.  And  to  what  are  we  indebted  for  that 
potent  word,  which,  as  with  the  wand  of  a  magician,  has  at  the 
same  moment  so  completely  transformed  our  knowledge  and 
dispelled  our  difficulties  ?  To  modern  science,  resolutely  pur- 
suing its  search  for  truth  in  spite  of  popular  obloquy  and— 
alas !  that  one  should  have  to  say  it— in  spite  too  often  of  theo- 
logical denunciation  (p.  53). 

Apart  from  its  general  importance,  I  read  this  remarkable 
statement  with  the  more  pleasure,  since,  however  imperfectly 
I  may  have  endeavored  to  illustrate  the  evolution  of  theology 
in  a  paper  published  in  this  Review  last  year,  it  seems  to  me 


236  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

that  in  principle,  at  any  rate,  I  may  hereafter  claim  high 
theological  sanction  for  the  views  there  set  forth. 

If  theologians  are  henceforward  prepared  to  recognize  the 
authority  of  secular  science  in  the  manner  and  to  the  extent 
indicated  in  the  Manchester  trilogy ;  if  the  distinguished 
prelates  who  offer  these  terms  are  really  plenipotentiaries, 
then,  so  far  as  I  may  presume  to  speak  on  such  a  matter, 
there  will  he  no  difficulty  about  concluding  a  perpetual 
treaty  of  peace,  and  indeed  of  alliance,  between  the  high 
contracting  powers,  whose  history  has  hitherto  been  little 
more  than  a  record  of  continual  warfare.  But  if  the  great 
Chancellor's  maxim,  "  Do  ut  des,"  is  to  form  the  basis  of  ne- 
gotiation, I  am  afraid  that  secular  science  will  be  ruined  ;  for 
it  seems  to  me  that  theology,  under  the  generous  impulse  of 
a  sudden  conversion,  has  given  all  that  she  hath ;  and  in- 
deed, on  one  point,  has  surrendered  more  than  can  reason- 
ably be  asked. 

I  suppose  I  must  be  prepared  to  face  the  reproach  which 
attaches  to  those  who  criticise  a  gift,  if  I  venture  to  observe 
that  I  do  not  think  that  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  need  have 
been  so  much  alarmed,  as  he  evidently  has  been,  by  the  ob- 
jections which  have  often  been  raised  to  prayer,  on  the 
ground  that  a  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer  is  inconsistent 
with  a  belief  in  the  constancy  of  the  order  of  nature. 

The  Bishop  appears  to  admit  that  there  is  an  antagonism 
between  the  "  regular  economy  of  nature  "  and  the  "  regular 
economy  of  prayer  "  (p.  39),  and  that  "  prayers  for  the  in- 
terruption of  God's  natural  order "  are  of  "  doubtful  valid- 
ity "  (p.  42).  It  appears  to  me  that  the  Bishop's  difficulty 
simply  adds  another  example  to  those  which  I  have  several 
times  insisted  upon  in  the  pages  of  this  Review  and  else- 
where, of  the  mischief  which  has  been  done,  and  is  being 
done,  by  a  mistaken  apprehension  of  the  real  meaning  of 
"  natural  order  "  and  "  law  of  nature." 

May  I,  therefore,  be  permitted  to  repeat,  once  more,  that 
the  statements  denoted  by  these  terms  have  no  greater  value 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  237 

or  cogency  than  such  as  may  attach  to  generalizations  from 
experience  of  the  past,  and  to  expectations  for  the  future 
based  upon  that  experience  ?  Nobody  can  presume  to  say 
what  the  order  of  nature  must  be ;  all  that  the  widest  experi- 
ence (even  if  it  extended  over  all  past  time  and  through  all 
spacp)  that  events  had  happened  in  a  certain  way  could 
justify,  would  be  a  proportionally  strong  expectation  that 
events  will  go  on  so  happening,  and  the  demand  for  a  pro- 
portional strength  of  evidence  in  favor  of  any  assertion  that 
they  had  happened  otherwise. 

It  is  this  weighty  consideration,  the  truth  of  which  every 
one  who  is  capable  of  logical  thought  must  surely  admit, 
which  knocks  the  bottom  out  of  all  a  priori  objections  either 
to  ordinary  "  miracles  "  or  to  the  efficacy  of  prayer,  in  so  far 
as  the  latter  implies  the  miraculous  intervention  of  a  higher 
power.  No  one  is  entitled  to  say  a  priori  that  any  given  so- 
called  miraculous  event  is  impossible ;  and  no  one  is  entitled 
to  say  a  priori  that  prayer  for  some  change  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  nature  can  not  possibly  avail. 

The  supposition  that  there  is  any  inconsistency  between 
the  acceptance  of  the  constancy  of  natural  order  and  a 
belief  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer,  is  the  more  unaccountable  as 
it  is  obviously  contradicted  by  analogies  furnished  by  every- 
day experience.  The  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer  depends 
upon  the  assumption  that  there  is  somebody,  somewhere, 
who  is  strong  enough  to  deal  with  the  earth  and  its  con- 
tents as  men  deal  with  the  things  and  events  which  they  are 
strong  enough  to  modify  or  control ;  and  who  is  capable  of 
being  moved  by  appeals  such  as  men  make  to  one  another. 
This  belief  does  not  even  involve  theism  ;  for  our  earth  is  an 
insignificant  particle  of  the  solar  system,  while  the  solar  sys- 
tem is  hardly  worth  speaking  of  in  relation  to  the  All ;  and, 
for  anything  that  can  be  proved  to  the  contrary,  there  may 
be  beings  endowed  with  full  powers  over  our  system,  yet, 
practically,  as  insignificant  as  ourselves  in  relation  to  the 
universe.     If  any  one  pleases,  therefore,  to  give  unrestrained 


238  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

liberty  to  his  fancy,  he  may  plead  analogy  in  favor  of  the 
dream,  that  there  may  be,  somewhere,  a  finite  being,  or  be- 
ings, who  can  play  with  the  solar  system  as  a  child  plays  with 
a  toy ;  and  that  such  being  may  be  willing  to  do  anything 
which  he  is  properly  supplicated  to  do.  For  we  are  not  jus- 
tified in  saying  that  it  is  impossible  for  beings  having  the 
nature  of  men,  only  vastly  more  powerful,  to  exist ;  and  if 
they  do  exist,  they  may  act  as  and  when  we  ask  them  to  do 
so,  just  as  our  brother  men  act.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
great  mass  of  the  human  race  has  believed,  and  still  be- 
lieves, in  such  beings,  under  the  various  names  of  fairies, 
gnomes,  angels,  and  demons.  Certainly  I  do  not  lack  faith 
in  the  constancy  of  natural  order.  But  I  am  not  less  con- 
vinced that  if  I  were  to  ask  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  to  do 
me  a  kindness  which  lay  within  his  power,  he  would  do  it. 
And  I  am  unable  to  see  that  his  action  on  my  request  in- 
volves any  violation  of  the  order  of  nature.  On  the  con- 
trary, as  I  have  not  the  honor  to  know  the  Bishop  person- 
ally, my  action  would  be  based  upon  my  faith  in  that  "  law 
of  nature,"  or  generalization  from  experience,  which  tells  me 
that,  as  a  rule,  men  who  occupy  the  Bishop's  position  are 
kindly  and  courteous.  How  is  the  case  altered  if  my  re- 
quest is  preferred  to  some  imaginary  superior  being,  or  to 
the  Most  High  Being,  who,  by  the  supposition,  is  able  to 
arrest  disease,  or  make  the  sun  stand  still  in  the  heavens, 
just  as  easily  as  I  can  stop  my  watch,  or  make  it  indicate  any 
hour  that  pleases  me  ? 

I  repeat  that  it  is  not  upon  any  a  priori  considerations 
that  objections;  either  to  the  supposed  efficacy  of  prayer  in 
modifying  the  course  of  events,  or  to  the  supposed  occurrence 
of  miracles,  can  be  scientifically  based.  The  real  objection, 
and,  to  my  mind,  the  fatal  objection,  to  both  these  suppo- 
sitions, is  the  inadequacy  of  the  evidence  to  prove  any  given 
case  of  such  occurrences  which  has  been  adduced.  It  is  a 
canon  of  common  sense,  *to  say  nothing  of  science,  that  the 
more  improbable  a  supposed  occurrence,  the   more  cogent 


AN   EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  239 

ought  to  be  the  evidence  in  its  favor.  I  have  looked  some- 
what carefully  into  the  subject,  and  I  am  unable  to  find  in 
the  records  of  any  miraculous  event  evidence  which  even  ap- 
proximates to  the  fulfillment  of  this  requirement. 

But,  in  the  case  of  prayer,  the  Bishop  points  out  a  most 
just  and  necessary  distinction  between  its  effect  on  the  course 
of  nature,  outside  ourselves,  and  its  effect  within  the  region 
of  the  supplicator's  mind. 

It  is  a  u  law  of  nature,"  verifiable  by  everyday  experience, 
that  our  already  formed  convictkms,  our  strong  desires,  our 
intent  occupation  with  particular  ideas,  modify  our  mental 
operations  to  a  most  marvelous  extent,  and  produce  enduring 
changes  in  the  direction  and  in  the  intensity  of  our  intellect- 
ual and  moral  activities.  Men  can  intoxicate  themselves 
with  ideas  as  effectually  as  with  alcohol  or  with  bang,  and 
produce,  by  dint  of  intense  thinking,  mental  conditions  hard- 
ly distinguishable  from  monomania.  Demoniac  possession  is 
mythical ;  but  the  faculty  of  being  possessed,  more  or  less 
completely,  by  an  idea  is  probably  the  fundamental  condition 
of  what  is  called  genius,  whether  it  show  itself  in  the  saint, 
the  artist,  or  the  man  of  science.  One  calls  it  faith,  another 
calls  it  inspiration,  a  third  calls  it  insight ;  but  the  "  intend- 
ing of  the  mind,"  to  borrow  Newton's  well-known  phrase,  the 
concentration  of  all  the  rays  of  intellectual  energy  on  some 
one  point,  until  it  glows  and  colors  the  whole  cast  of  thought 
with  its  peculiar  light,  is  common  to  all. 

I  take  it  that  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  has  psychological 
science  with  him  when  he  insists  upon  the  subjective  efficacy 
of  prayer  in  faith,  and  on  the  seemingly  miraculous  effects 
which  such  "  intending  of  the  mind "  upon  religious  and 
moral  ideals  may  have  upon  character  and  happiness.  Scien- 
tific faith,  at  present,  takes  it  no  further  than  the  prayer 
which  Ajax  offered  ;  but  that  petition  is  continually  granted. 

"Whatever  points  of  detail  may  yet  remain  open  for  dis- 
cussion, however,  I  repeat  the  opinion  I  have  already  ex- 
pressed, that  the  Manchester  sermons  concede  all  that  sci- 


240  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ence  has  an  indisputable  right,  or  any  pressing  need,  to  ask, 
and  that  not  grudgingly  but  generously;  and,  if  the  three 
bishops  of  1887  carry  the  Church  with  them,  I  think  they 
will  have  as  good  title  to  the  permanent  gratitude  of  posterity 
as  the  famous  seven  who  went  to  the  Tower  in  defense  of  the 
Church  two  hundred  years  ago. 

"Will  their  brethren  follow  their  just  and  prudent  guid- 
ance? I  have  no  such  acquaintance  with  the  currents  of 
ecclesiastical  opinion  as  would  justify  me  in  even  hazarding 
a  guess  on  such  a  difficult  topic.  But  some  recent  omens  are 
hardly  favorable.  There  seems  to  be  an  impression  abroad — 
I  do  not  desire  to  give  any  countenance  to  it — that  I  am  fond 
of  reading  sermons.  From  time  to  time,  unknown  corre- 
spondents— some  apparently  animated  by  the  charitable  de- 
sire to  promote  my  conversion,  and  others  unmistakably  anx- 
ious to  spur  me  to  the  expression  of  wrathful  antagonism — 
favor  me  with  reports  or  copies  of  such  productions. 

I  found  one  of  the  latter  category  among  the  accumulated 
arrears  to  which  I  have  already  referred. 

It  is  a  full,  and  apparently  accurate,  report  of  a  discourse 
by  a  person  of  no  less  ecclesiastical  rank  than  the  three  au- 
thors of  the  sermons  I  have  hitherto  been  considering ;  but 
who  he  is,  and  where  or  when  the  sermon  was  preached,  are 
secrets  which  wild  horses  shall  not  tear  from  me,  lest  I  fall 
again  under  high  censure  for  attacking  a  clergyman.  Only 
if  the  editor  of  this  Review  thinks  it  his  duty  to  have  inde- 
pendent evidence  that  the  sermon  has  a  real  existence,  will  I, 
in  the  strictest  confidence,  communicate  it  to  him. 

The  preacher,  in  this  case,  is  of  a  very  different  mind 
from  the  three  bishops — and  this  mind  is  different  in  quality, 
different  in  spirit,  and  different  in  contents.  He  discourses 
on  the  a  priori  objections  to  miracles,  apparently  without 
being  aware,  in  spite  of  all  the  discussions  of  the  last  seven 
or  eight  years,  that  he  is  doing  battle  with  a  shadow. 

I  trust  I  do  not  misrepresent  the  Bishop  of  Manchester 
in  saying  that 'the  essence  of  his  remarkable  discourse  is  the 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  241 

insistence  upon  the  "  supreme  importance  of  the  purely  spir- 
itual in  our  faith,"  and  of  the  relative,  if  not  absolute  insig- 
nificance of  aught  else.  He  obviously  perceives  the  bearing 
of  his  arguments  against  the  alterability  of  the  course  of  out- 
ward nature  by  prayer,  on  the  question  of  miracles  in  gen- 
eral ;  for  he  is  careful  to  say  that  "  the  possibility  of  miracles, 
of  a  rare  and  unusual  transcendance  of  the  world  order  is 
not  here  in  question  "  (p.  38).  It  may  be  permitted  me  to 
suppose,  however,  that,  if  miracles  were  in  question,  the 
speaker  who  warns  us  "  that  we  must  look  for  the  heart  of 
the  absolute  religion  in  that  part  of  it  which  prescribes  our 
moral  and  religious  relations  "  (p.  46)  would  not  be  disposed 
to  advise  those  who  had  found  the  heart  of  Christianity  to 
take  much  thought  about  its  miraculous  integument. 

My  anonymous  sermon  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  such 
notions  as  these,  and  its  preacher  is  not  too  polite,  to  say 
nothing  of  charitable,  toward  those  who  entertain  them. 

Scientific  men,  therefore,  are  perfectly  right  in  asserting 
that  Christianity  rests  on  miracles.  If  miracles  never  hap- 
pened, Christianity,  in  any  sense  which  is  not  a^mockery,  which 
does  not  make  the  term  of  none  effect,  has  no  reality.  I  dwell 
on  this  because  there  is  now  an  effort  making  to  get  up  a  non- 
miraculous,  invertebrate  Christianity,  which  may  escape  the 
ban  of  science.  And  I  would  warn  you  very  distinctly  against 
this  new  contrivance.  Christianity  is  essentially  miraculous, 
and  falls  to  the  ground  if  miracles  be  impossible. 

Well,  warning  for  warning.  I  venture  to  warn  this 
preacher  and  those  who,  with  him,  persist  in  identifying 
Christianity  with  the  miraculous,  that  such  forms  of  Chris- 
tianity are  not  only  doomed  to  fall  to  the  ground ;  but  that, 
within  the  last  half  century,  they  have  been  driving  that  way 
with  continually  accelerated  velocity. 

The  so-called  religious  world  is  given  to  a  strange  delu- 
sion. It  fondly  imagines  that  it  possesses  the  monopoly  of 
serious  and  constant  reflection  upon  the  terrible  problems  of 
existence ;  and  that  those  who  can  not  accept  its  shibboleths 


242  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

are  either  mere  Gallios,  earing  for  none  of  these  things,  or 
libertines  desiring  to  escape  from  the  restraints  of  morality. 
It  does  not  appear  to  have  entered  the  imaginations  of  these 
people  that,  outside  their  pale  and  firmly  resolved  never  to 
enter  it,  there  are  thousands  of  men,  certainly  not  their  in- 
feriors in  character,  capacity,  or  knowledge  of  the  questions 
at  issue,  who  estimate  those  purely  spiritual  elements  of  the 
Christian  faith  of  which  the  Bishop  of  Manchester  speaks  as 
highly  as  the  Bishop  does ;  but  who  will  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Christian  Churches,  because  in  their  apprehension 
and  for  them,  the  profession  of  belief  in  the  miraculous,  on 
the  evidence  offered,  would  be  simply  immoral. 

So  far  as  my  experience  goes,  men  of  science  are  neither 
better  nor  worse  than  the  rest  of  the  world.  Occupation  with 
the  endlessly  great  parts  of  the  universe  does  not  necessarily 
involve  greatness  of  character,  nor  does  microscopic  study  of 
the  infinitely  little  always  produce  humility.  "We  have  our 
full  share  of  original  sin ;  need,  greed,  and  vainglory  beset  us 
as  they  do  other  mortals ;  and  our  progress  is,  for  the  most 
part,  like  that  of  a  tacking  ship,  the  resultant  of  opposite 
divergencies  from  the  straight  path.  But,  for  all  that,  there 
is  one  moral  benefit  which  the  pursuit  of  science  unquestion- 
ably bestows.  It  keeps  the  estimate  of  the  value  of  evidence 
up  to  the  proper  mark ;  and  we  are  constantly  receiving  les- 
sons, and  sometimes  very  sharp  ones,  on  the  nature  of  proof. 
Men  of  science  will  always  act  up  to  their  standard  of  vera- 
city, when  mankind  in  general  leave  off  sinning ;  but  that 
standard  appears  to  me  to  be  higher  among  them  than  in  any 
other  class  of  the  community. 

I  do  not  know  any  body  of  scientific  men  who  could  be 
got  to  listen  without  the  strongest  expressions  of  disgusted 
repudiation  to  the  exposition  of  a  pretended  scientific  discov- 
ery, which  had  no  better  evidence  to  show  for  itself  than  the 
story  of  the  devils  entering  a  herd  of  swine,  or  of  the  fig-tree 
that  was  blasted  for  bearing  no  figs  when  "  it  was  not  the 
season  of  figs."*   Whether  such  events  are  possible  or  impos- 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  243 

sible,  no  man  can  say ;  but  scientific  ethics  can  and  does  de- 
clare that  the  profession  of  belief  in  them,  on  the  evidence  of 
documents  of  unknown  date  and  of  unknown  authorship,  is 
immoral.  Theological  apologists  who  insist  that  morality 
will  vanish  if  their  dogmas  are  exploded,  would  do  well  to 
consider  the  fact  that,  in  the  matter  of  intellectual  veracity, 
science  is  already  a  long  way  ahead  of  the  Churches ;  and, 
that,  in  this  particular,  it  is  exerting  an  educational  influence 
on  mankind  of  which  the  Churches  have  shown  themselves 
utterly  incapable. 

Undoubtedly  that  varying  compound  of  some  of  the  best 
and  some  of  the  worst  elements  of  Paganism  and  Judaism, 
molded  in  practice  by  the  innate  character  of  certain  people 
of  the  Western  world,  which,  since  the  second  century,  has 
assumed  to  itself  the  title  of  orthodox  Christianity,  "  rests 
on  miracles  "  and  falls  to  the  ground,  not  "  if  miracles  be  im- 
possible," but  if  those  to  which  it  is  committed  prove  them- 
selves unable  to  fulfill  the  conditions  of  honest  belief.  That 
this  Christianity  is  doomed  to  fall  is,  to  my  mind,  beyond  a 
doubt ;  but  its  fall  will  be  neither  sudden  nor  speedy.  The 
Church,  with  all  the  aid  lent  it  by  the  secular  arm,  took 
many  centuries  to  extirpate  the  open  practice  of  pagan  idol- 
atry within  its  own  fold;  and  those  who  have  traveled  in 
southern  Europe  will  be  aware  that  it  has  not  extirpated  the 
essence  of  such  idolatry  even  yet.  Mutato  nomine,  it  is  prob- 
able that  there  is  as  much  sheer  fetichism  among  the  Roman 
populace  now  as  there  was  eighteen  hundred  years  ago ;  and 
if  Marcus  Antoninus  could  descend  from  his  horse  and  ascend 
the  steps  of  the  Ara  Cceli  church  about  Twelfth  Day,  the 
only  thing  that  need  strike  him  would  he  the  extremely  con- 
temptible character  of  the  modern  idols  as  works  of  art. 

Science  will  certainly  neither  ask  for,  nor  receive,  the  aid  of 
the  secular  arm.  It  will  trust  to  the  much  better  and  more 
powerful  help  of  that  education  in  scientific  truth  and  in  the 
morals  of  assent,  which  is  rendered  as  indispensable,  as  it  is 
inevitable,  by  the  permeation  of  practical  life  with  the  prod- 


244  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ucts  and  ideas  of  science.  But  no  one  who  considers  the 
present  state  of  even  the  most  developed  countries  can  doubt 
that  the  scientific  light  that  has  come  into  the  world  will,  for 
a  long  time,  have  to  shine  in  the  midst  of  darkness.  The 
urban  populations,  driven  into  contact  with  science  by  trade 
and  manufacture,  will  more  and  more  receive  it,  while  the 
pagani  will  lag  behind.  Let  us  hope  that  no  Julian  may- 
arise  among  them  to  head  a  forlorn  hope  against  the  inevita- 
ble. Whatever  happens,  science  may  bide  her  time  in  pa- 
tience and  in  confidence. 

But  to  return  to  my  "  Anonymous."  I  am  afraid  that  if 
he  represents  any  great  party  in  the  Church,  the  spirit  of 
justice  and  reasonableness  which  animates  the  three  bishops 
has  as  slender  a  chance  of  being  imitated,  on  a  large  scale,  as 
their  common  sense  and  their  courtesy.  For,  not  contented 
with  misrepresenting  science  on  its  speculative  side,  "  Anony- 
mous "  attacks  its  morality. 

For  two  whole  years,  investigations  and  conclusions  which 
would  upset  the  theories  of  Darwin  on  the  formation  of  coral 
islands  were  actually  suppressed,  and  that  by  the  advice  even 
of  those  who  accepted  them,  for  fear  of  upsetting  the  faith 
and  disturbing  the  judgment  formed  by  the  multitude  on  the 
scientific  character — the  infallibility — of  the  great  master  ! 

So  far  as  I  know  anything  about  the  matters  which  are 
here  referred  to,  the  part  of  this  passage  which  I  have  itali- 
cized is  absolutely  untrue.  I  believe  that  I  am  intimately  ac- 
quainted with  all  Mr.  Darwin's  immediate  scientific  friends ; 
and  I  say  that  no  one  of  them,  nor  any  other  man  of  science 
known  to  me,  ever  could,  or  would,  have  given  such  advice  to 
any  one — if  for  no  other  reason  than  that,  with  the  example 
of  the  most  candid  and  patient  listener  to  objections  that 
ever  lived  fresh  in  their  memories,  they  could  not  so  grossly 
have  at  once  violated  their  highest  duty  and  dishonored  their 
friend. 

The  charge. 'thus  brought  by  "Anonymous"  affects  the 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  245 

honor  and  the  probity  of  men  of  science ;  if  it  is  true,  we 
have  forfeited  all  claim  to  the  confidence  of  the  general  pub- 
lic. In  my  belief  it  is  utterly  false,  and  its  real  effect  will  be 
to  discredit  those  who  are  responsible  for  it.  As  is  the  way 
with  slanders,  it  has  grown  by  repetition.  "  Anonymous  "  is 
responsible  for  the  peculiarly  offensive  form  which  it  has 
taken  in  his  hands ;  but  he  is  not  responsible  for  originating 
it.  He  has  evidently  been  inspired  by  an  article  entitled 
"A  Great  Lesson,"  published  in  the  September  number  of 
this  Keview.  Truly  it  is  "  a  great  lesson,"  but  not  quite  in 
the  sense  intended  by  the  giver  thereof. 

In  the  course  of  his  doubtless  well-meant  admonitions,  the 
Duke  of  Argyll  commits  himself  to  a  greater  number  of  state- 
ments which  are  demonstrably  incorrect,  and  which  any  one 
who  ventured  to  write  upon  the  subject  ought  to  have  known 
to  be  incorrect,  than  I  have  ever  seen  gathered  together  in  so 
small  a  space. 

I  submit  a  gathering  from  the  rich  store  for  the  appre- 
ciation of  the  public. 

First  :— 

Mr.  Murray's  new  explanation  of  the  structure  of  coral-reefs 
and  islands  was  communicated  to  the  Eoyal  Society  of  Edin- 
burgh in  1880,  and  supported  with  such  a  weight  of  facts  and 
such  a  close  texture  of  reasoning,  that  no  serious  reply  has  ever 
been  attempted  (p.  305). 

"  No  serious  reply  has  ever  been  attempted  "  !  I  suppose 
that  the  Duke  of  Argyll  may  have  heard  of  Professor  Dana, 
whose  years  of  labor  devoted  to  corals  and  coral-reefs  when 
he  was  naturalist  of  the  American  expedition  under  Commo- 
dore Wilkes,  more  than  forty  years  ago,  have  ever  since  caused 
him  to  be  recognized  as  an  authority  of  the  first  rank  on  such 
subjects.  Now  does  his  Grace  know,  or  does  he  not  know, 
that,  in  the  year  1885,  Professor  Dana  published  an  elaborate 
paper  "  On  the  Origin  of  Coral-Eeefs  and  Islands,"  in  which, 
after  referring  to  a  presidential  address  by  the  Director  of 


246  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  Geological  Survey  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  delivered 
in  1883,  in  which  special  attention  is  directed  to  Mr.  Mur- 
ray's views,  Professor  Dana  says : — 

The  existing  .state  of  doubt  on  the  question  has  led  the  writer 
to  reconsider  the  earlier  and  later  facts,  and  in  the  following 
pages  he  gives  his  results. 

Professor  Dana  then  devotes  many  pages  of  his  very  "  seri- 
ous reply  "  to  a  most  admirable  and  weighty  criticism  of  the 
objections  which  have  at  various  times  been  raised  to  Mr. 
Darwin's  doctrine,  by  Professor  Semper,  by  Dr.  Kein,  and 
finally  by  Mr.  Murray,  and  he  states  his  final  judgment  as 
follows : — 

With  the  theory  of  abrasion  and  solution  incompetent,  all 
the  hypotheses  of  objectors  to  Darwin's  theory  are  alike  weak ; 
for  all  have  made  these  processes  their  chief  reliance,  whether 
appealing  to  a  calcareous,  or  a  volcanic,  or  a  mountain-peak 
basement  for  the  structure.  The  subsidence  which  the  Dar- 
winian theory  requires  has  not  been  opposed  by  the  mention  of 
any  fact  at  variance  with  it,  nor  by  setting  aside  Darwin's  argu- 
ments in  its  favor;  and  it  has  found  new  support  in  the  facts 
from  the  Challenger's  soundings  off  Tahiti,  that  had  been  put 
in  array  against  it,  and  strong  corroboration  in  the  facts  from 
the  West  Indies. 

Darwin's  theory,  therefore,  remains  as  the  theory  that  ac- 
counts for  the  origin  of  reefs  and  islands.* 

Be  it  understood  that  I  express  no  opinion  on  the  contro- 
verted points.  I  doubt  if  there  are  ten  living  men  who,  hav- 
ing a  practical  knowledge  of  what  a  coral-reef  is,  have  en- 
deavored to  master  the  very  difficult  biological  and  geological 
problems  involved  in  their  study.  I  happen  to  have  spent 
the  best  part  of  three  years  among  coral-reefs  and  to  have 
made  that  attempt;  and,  when  Mr.  Murray's  work  appeared, 
I  said  to  myself  that  until  I  had  two  or  three  months  to  give 

*  American  Journal  of  Science>  1885,  p.  190. 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  247 

to  the  renewed  study  of  the  subject  in  all  its  bearings,  I  must 
be  content  to  remain  in  a  condition  of  suspended  judgment. 
In  the  mean  while,  the  man  who  would  be  voted  by  common 
acclamation  as  the  most  competent  person  now  living  to  act 
as  umpire,  has  delivered  the  verdict  I  have  quoted ;  and,  to 
go  no  further,  has  fully  justified  the  hesitation  I  and  others 
may  have  felt  about  expressing  an  opinion.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances, it  seems  to  me  to  require  a  good  deal  of  courage 
to  say  "  no  serious  reply  has  ever  been  attempted " ;  and  to 
chide  the  men  of  science,  in  lofty  tones,  for  their  "  reluctance 
to  admit  an  error"  which  is  not  admitted;  and  for  their 
"  slow  and  sulky  acquiescence  "  in  a  conclusion  which  they 
have  the  gravest  warranty  for  suspecting ! 
Second : — 

Darwin  himself  had  lived  to  hear  of  the  new  solution,  and, 
with  that  splendid  candor  which  was  eminent  in  him,  his 
mind,  though  now  grown  old  in  his  own  early  convictions, 
was  at  least  ready  to  entertain  it,  and  to  confess  that  serious 
doubts  had  been  awakened  as  to  the  truth,  of  his  famous  theory 
(p.  305). 

I  wish  that  Darwin's  splendid  candor  could  be  con- 
veyed by  some  description  of  spiritual  "  microbe  "  to  those 
who  write  about  him.  I  am  not  aware  that  Mr.  Darwin  ever 
entertained  "  serious  doubts  as  to  the  truth  of  his  famous 
theory  " ;  and  there  is  tolerably  good  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary. The  second  edition  of  his  work,  published  in  1876, 
proves  that  he  entertained  no  such  doubts  then ;  a  letter  to 
Professor  Semper,  whose  objections,  in  some  respects,  fore- 
stalled those  of  Mr.  Murray,  dated  October  2,  1879,  expresses 
his  continued  adherence  to  the  opinion  "  that  the  atolls  and 
barrier  reefs  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans 
indicate  subsidence  " ;  and  the  letter  of  my  friend  Professor 
Judd,  printed  at  the  end  of  this  article  (which  I  had  perhaps 
better  say  Professor  Judd  had  not  seen)  will  prove  that  this 
opinion  remained  unaltered  to  the  end  of  his  life. 


248  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Third  :— 

.  .  .  Darwin's  theory  is  a  dream.  It  is  not  only  unsound, 
but  it  is  in  many  respects  the  reverse  of  truth.  With  all  his 
conscientiousness,  with  all  his  caution,  with  all  his  powers  of 
observation,  Darwin  in  this  matter  fell  into  errors  as  profound 
as  the  abysses  of  the  Pacific  (p.  301). 

Eeally?  It  seems  to  me  that,  under  the  circumstances,  it  is 
pretty  clear  that  these  lines  exhibit  a  lack  of  the  qualities 
justly  ascribed  to  Mr.  Darwin,  which  plunges  their  author 
into  a  much  deeper  abyss,  and  one  from  which  there  is  no 
hope  of  emergence. 
Fourth : — 

All  the  acclamations  with  which  it  was  received  were  as  the 
shouts  of  an  ignorant  mob  (p.  301). 

But  surely  it  should  be  added  that  the  Coryphaaus  of  this 
ignorant  mob,  the  fugleman  of  the  shouts,  was  one  of  the 
most  accomplished  naturalists  and  geologists  now  living — 
the  American  Dana — who,  after  years  of  independent  study 
extending  over  numerous  reefs  in  the  Pacific,  gave  his  hearty 
assent  to  Darwin's  views,  and,  after  all  that  had  been  said, 
deliberately  reaffirmed  that  assent  in  the  year  1885. 
Fifth  :— 

The^ overthrow  of  Darwin's  speculation  is  only  beginning  to 
be  known.  It  has  been  whispered  for  some  time.  The  cher- 
ished dogma  has  been  dropping  very  slowly  out  of  sight  (p. 
301). 

Darwin's  speculation  may  be  right  or  wrong,  but  I  submit 
that  that  which  has  not  happened  can  not  even  begin  to  be 
known,  except  by  those  who  have  miraculous  gifts  to  which 
we  poor  scientific  people  do  not  aspire.  The  overthrow  of 
Darwin's  views  may  have  been  whispered  by  those  who  hoped 
for  it ;  and  they  were  perhaps  wise  in  not  raising  their  voices 
above  a  whisper.  Incorrect  statements,  if  made  too  loudly, 
are  apt  to  bring  about  unpleasant  consequences. 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  249 

Sixth.  Mr.  Murray's  views,  published  in  1880,  are  said  to 
have  met  with  "slow  and  sulky  acquiescence"  (p.  305).  I 
have  proved  that  they  can  not  be  said  to  have  met  with  gen- 
eral acquiescence  of  any  sort,  whether  quick  and  cheerful,  or 
slow  and  sulky ;  and  if  this  assertion  is  meant  to  convey  the 
impression  that  Mr.  Murray's  views  have  been  ignored,  that 
there  has  been  a  conspiracy  of  silence  against  them,  it  is  ut- 
terly contrary  to  notorious  fact. 

Professor  Geikie's  well-known  Textbook  of  Geology  was 
published  in  1882,  and  at  pages  457-459  of  that  work  there 
is  a  careful  exposition  of  Mr.  Murray's  views.  Moreover, 
Professor  Geikie  has  specially  advocated  them  on  other  occa- 
sions,* notably  in  a  long  article  on  "  The  Origin  of  Coral- 
Keefs,"  published  in  two  numbers  of  Nature  for  1883,  and  in 
a  presidential  address  delivered  in  the  same  year.  If,  in  so 
short  a  time  after  the  publication  of  his  views,  Mr.  Murray 
could  boast  of  a  convert  so  distinguished  and  influential  as 
the  Director  of  the  Geological  Survey,  it  seems  to  me  that 
this  wonderful  conspiration  de  silence  (which  has  about  as 
much  real  existence  as  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  other  bogie, 
"  the  Reign  of  Terror  ")  must  have  ipso  facto  collapsed.  I 
wish  that,  when  I  was  a  young  man,  my  endeavors  to  upset 
some  prevalent  errors  had  met  with  as  speedy  and  effectual 
backing. 

Seventh : — 

.  .  .  Mr.  John  Murray  was  strongly  advised  against  the 
publication  of  his  views  in  derogation  of  Darwin's  long-ac- 
cepted theory  of  the  coral  islands,  and  was  actually  induced  to 
delay  it  for  two  years.  Yet  the  late  Sir  Wyville  Thomson, 
who  was  at  the  head  of  the  naturalists  of  the  Challenger  ex- 
pedition, was  himself  convinced  by  Mr.  Murray's  reasoning  (p. 
307). 

*  Professor  Geikie,  however,  though  a  strong,  is  a  fair  and  candid 
advocate.  He  says  of  Darwin's  theory,  "  That  it  may  be  possibly  true, 
in  some  instances,  may  be  readily  granted."  For  Professor  Geikie, 
then,  it  is  not  yet  overthrown — still  less  a  dream. 


250  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Clearly,  then,  it  could  not  be  Mr.  Murray's  official  chief 
who  gave  him  this  advice.  Who  was  it  ?  And  what  was  the 
exact  nature  of  the  advice  given  ?  Until  we  have  some  pre- 
cise information  on  this  head,  I  shall  take  leave  to  doubt 
whether  this  statement  is  more  accurate  than  those  which  I 
have  previously  cited. 

Whether  such  advice  was  wise  or  foolish,  just  or  immoral, 
depends  entirely  on  the  motive  of  the  person  who  gave  it. 
If  he  meant  to  suggest  to  Mr.  Murray  that  it  might  be  wise 
for  a  young  and  comparatively  unknown  man  to  walk  warily, 
when  he  proposed  to  attack  a  generalization  based  on  many 
years'  labor  of  one  undoubtedly  competent  person,  and  forti- 
fied by  the  independent  results  of  the  many  years"  labor  of 
another  undoubtedly  competent  person ;  and  even,  if  neces- 
sary, to  take  two  whole  years  in  fortifying  his  position,  I 
think  that  such  advice  would  have  been  sagacious  and  kind. 
I  suppose  that  there  are  few  working  men  of  science  who 
have  not  kept  their  ideas  to  themselves,  while  gathering  and 
sifting  evidence,  for  a  much  longer  period  than  two  years. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Murray  was  advised  to  delay 
the  publication  of  his  criticisms,  simply  to  save  Mr.  Darwin's 
credit  and  to  preserve  some  reputation  for  infallibility,  which 
no  one  ever  heard  of,  then  I  have  no  hesitation  in  declaring 
that  his  adviser  was  profoundly  dishonest,  as  well  as  extremely 
foolish,  and  that,  if  he  is  a  man  of  science,  he  has  disgraced 
his  calling. 

But,  after  all,  this  supposed  scientific  Achitophel  has  not 
yet  made  good  the  primary  fact  of  his  existence.  Until  the 
needful  proof  is  forthcoming,  I  think  I  am  justified  in  sus- 
pending my  judgment  as  to  whether  he  is  much  more  than 
an  anti-scientific  myth.  I  leave  it  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll  to 
judge  of  the  extent  of  the  obligation  under  which,  for  his 
own  sake,  he  may  lie  to  produce  the  evidence  on  which  his 
aspersions  of  the  honor  of  scientific  men  are  based.  I  can 
not  pretend  that  we  are  seriously  disturbed  by  charges  which 
every  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  truth  of  the  matter 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  251 

knows  to  be  ridiculous ;  but  mud  has  a  habit  of  staining  if  it 
lies  too  long,  and  it  is  as  well  to  have  it  brushed  oil  as  soon  as 
may  be. 

So  much  for  the  "  Great  Lesson."  It  is  followed  by  a 
"  Little  Lesson,"  apparently  directed  against  my  infallibility 
— a  doctrine  about  which  I  should  be  inclined  to  paraphrase 
Wilkes's  remark  to  George  the  Third,  when  he  declared  that 
he,  at  any  rate,  was  not  a  Wilkite.  But  I  really  should  be 
glad  to  think  that  there  are  people  who  need  the  warning, 
because  then  it  will  be  obvious  that  this  raking  up  of  an  old 
story  can  not  have  been  suggested  by  a  mere  fanatical  desire 
to  damage  men  of  science.  I  can  but  rejoice,  then,  that 
these  misguided  enthusiasts,  whose  faith  in  me  has  so  far 
exceeded  the  bounds  of  reason,  should  be  set  right.  But 
that  "  want  of  finish  "  in  the  matter  of  accuracy  which  so 
terribly  mars  the  effect  of  the  "  Great  Lesson,"  is  no  less  con- 
spicuous in  the  case  of  the  "  Little  Lesson,"  and,  instead  of 
setting  my  too  fervent  disciples  right,  it  will  set  them  wrong. 

The  Duke  of  Argyll,  in  telling  the  story  of  BathyMus, 
says  that  my  mind  was  "  caught  by  this  new  and  grand  gen- 
eralization of  the  physical  basis  of  life."  I  never  have  been 
guilty  of  a  reclamation  about  anything  to  my  credit,  and  I 
do  not  mean  to  be ;  but  if  there  is  any  blame  going,  I  do  not 
choose  to  be  relegated  to  a  subordinate  place  when  I  have  a 
claim  to  the  first.  The  responsibility  for  the  first  description 
and  the  naming  of  BathyMus  is  mine  and  mine  only.  The 
paper  on  "  Some  Organisms  living  at  great  depths  in  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,"  in  which  I  drew  attention  to  this  substance, 
is  to  be  found  by  the  curious  in  the  8th  volume  of  the  Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Microscopical  Science,  and  was  published  in 
the  year  1868.  Whatever  errors  are  contained  in  that  paper 
are  my  own  peculiar  property ;  but  neither  at  the  meeting 
of  the  British  Association  in  1868,  nor  anywhere  else,  have  I 
gone  beyond  what  is  there  stated ;  except  in  so  far  that,  at  a 
long  -  subsequent  meeting  of  the  Association,  being  impor- 
tuned about  the  subject,  I  ventured  to  express,  somewhat 


252  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

emphatically,  the  wish  that  the  thing  was  at  the  bottom  of 
the  sea. 

What  is  meant  by  my  being  caught  by  a  generalization 
about  the  physical  basis  of  life  I  do  not  know ;  still  less  can 
I  understand  the  assertion  that  Bathybius  was  accepted  be- 
cause of  its  supposed  harmony  with  Darwin's  speculations. 
That  which  interested  me  in  the  matter  was  the  apparent 
analogy  of  Bathybius  with  other  well-known  forms  of  lower 
life,  such  as  the  plasmodia  of  the  Myxomycetes  and  the  Rhizo- 
pods.  Speculative  hopes  or  fears  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  matter ;  and  if  Bathybius  were  brought  up  alive  from 
the  bottom  of  the  Atlantic  to-morrow,  the  fact  would  not 
have  the  slightest  bearing,  that  I  can  discern,  upon  Mr.  Dar- 
win's speculations,  or  upon  any  of  the  disputed  problems  of 
biology.  It  would  merely  be  one  elementary  organism  the 
more  added  to  the  thousands  already  known. 

Up  to  this  moment  I  was  not  aware  of  the  universal 
favor  with  which  Bathybius  was  received.*  Those  simulators 
of  an  "  ignorant  mob  "  who,  according  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll, 
welcomed  Darwin's  theory  of  coral-reefs,  made  no  demonstra- 
tion in  my  favor,  unless  his  Grace  includes  Sir  Wyville 
Thomson,  Dr.  Carpenter,  Dr.  Bessels,  and  Professor  Haeckel 
under  that  head.  On  the  contrary,  a  sagacious  friend  of 
mine,  than  whom  there  was  no  more  competent  judge,  the 
late  Mr.  George  Busk,  was  not  to  be  converted ;  while,  long 
before  the  Challenger  workr  Ehrenberg  wrote  to  me  very 
skeptically;  and  I  fully  expected  that  that  eminent  man 
would  favor  me  with  pretty  sharp  criticism.  Unfortunately 
he  died  shortly  afterward,  and  nothing  from  him,  that  I 
know  of,  appeared.     When  Sir  Wyville  Thomson  wrote  to' 

*  I  find,  moreover,  that  I  specially  warned  my  readers  against  hasty 
judgment.  After  stating  the  facts  of  observation,  I  add,  "  I  have, 
hitherto,  said  nothing  about  their  meaning,  as,  in  an  inquiry  so  diffi- 
cult and  fraught  with  interest  as  this,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  in  the 
highest  degree  .important  to  keep  the  questions  of  fact  and  the  ques- 
tions of  interpretation  well  apart "  (p.  210). 


AN  EPISCOPAL  TRILOGY.  253 

me  a  hAef  account  of  the  results  obtained  on  board  the  Clial- 
lenger,  I  sent  his  statement  to  Nature,  in  which  journal  it 
appeared  the  following  week,  without  any  further  note  or 
comment  than  was  needful  to  explain  the  circumstances.  In 
thus  allowing  judgment  to  go  by  default,  I  am  afraid  I 
showed  a  reckless  and  ungracious  disregard  for  the  feelings 
of  the  believers  in  my  infallibility.  No  doubt  I  ought  to 
have  hedged  and  fenced  and  attenuated  the  effect  of  Sir 
Wyville  Thomson's  brief  note  in  every  possible  way.  Or 
perhaps  I  ought  to  have  suppressed  the  note  altogether,  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  a  mere  ex  parte  statement.  My  ex- 
cuse is  that,  notwithstanding  a  large  and  abiding  faith  in 
human  folly,  I  did  not  know  then,  any  more  than  I  know 
now,  that  there  was  anybody  foolish  enough  to  be  unaware 
that  the  only  people,  scientific  or  other,  who  never  make 
mistakes  are  those  who  do  nothing ;  or  that  anybody,  for 
whose  opinion  I  cared,  would  not  rather  see  me  commit  ten 
blunders  than  to  try  to  hide  one. 

Pending  the  production  of  further  evidence,  I  hold  that 
the  existence  of  people  who  believe  in  the  infallibility  of 
men  of  science  is  as  purely  mythical  as  that  of  the  evil 
counselor  who  advised  the  withholding  of  the  truth  lest  it 
should  conflict  with  that  belief. 

I  venture  to  think,  then,  that  the  Duke  of  Argyll  might 
have  spared  his  "  Little  Lesson  "  as  well  as  his  "  Great  Les- 
son "  with  advantage.  The  paternal  authority  who  whips  the 
child  for  sins  he  has  not  committed  does  not  strengthen  his 
moral  influence — rather  excites  contempt  and  repugnance. 
And  if,  as  would  seem  from  this  and  former  monitory  allocu- 
tions which  have  been  addressed  to  us,  the  Duke  aspires  to 
the  position  of  censor,  or  spiritual  director,  in  relation  to  the 
men  who  are  doing  the  work  of  physical  science,  he  really 
must  get  up  his  facts  better.  There  will  be  an  end  to  all 
chance  of  our  kissing  the  rod  if  his  Grace  goes  wrong  a  third 
time.  He  must  not  say  again  that  "  no  serious  reply  has 
been  attempted  "  to  a  view  which  was  discussed  and  repudi- 


254  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ated,  two  years  before,  by  one  of  the  highest  extant  authori- 
ties on  the  subject ;  he  must  not  say  that  Darwin  accepted 
that  which  it  can  be  proved  he  did  not  accept ;  he  must  not 
say  that  a  doctrine  has  dropped  into  the  abyss  when  it  is  quite 
obviously  alive  and  kicking  at  the  surface  ;  he  must  not  as- 
similate a  man  like  Professor  Dana  to  the  components  of  an 
"  ignorant  mob  " ;  he  must  not  say  that  things  are  beginning 
to  be  know  which  are  not  known  at  all ;  he  must  not  say 
that  "slow  and  sulky  acquiescence  "  has  been  given  to  that 
which  can  not  yet  boast  of  general  acquiescence  of  any  kind ; 
he  must  not  suggest  that  a  view  which  has  been  publicly 
advocated  by  the  Director  of  the  Geological  Survey  and  no 
less  publicly  discussed  by  many  other  authoritative  writers 
has  been  intentionally  and  systematically  ignored ;  he  must 
not  ascribe  ill  motives  for  a  course  of  action  which  is  the 
only  proper  one  ;  and  finally,  if  any  one  but  myself  were  in- 
terested, I  should  say  that  he  had  better  not  waste  his  time 
in  raking  up  the  errors  of  those  whose  lives  have  been  occupied, 
not  in  talking  about  science,  but  in  toiling,  sometimes  with 
success  and  sometimes  with  failure,  to  get  some  real  work 
done. 

The  most  considerable  difference  I  note  among  men  is  not 
in  their  readiness  to  fall  into  error,  but  in  their  readiness  to 
acknowledge  these  inevitable  lapses.  The  Duke  of  Argyll 
has  now  a  splendid  opportunity  for  proving  to  the  world  in 
which  of  these  categories  it  is  hereafter  to  rank  him. 


Dear  Professor  Huxley — A  short  time  before  Mr. 
Darwin's  death,  I  had  a  conversation  with  him  concerning 
the  observations  which  had  been  made  by  Mr.  Murray  upon 
coral-reefs,  and  the  speculations  which  had  been  founded 
upon  these  observations.  I  found  that  Mr.  Darwin  had  very 
carefully  considered  the  whole  subject,  and  that  while,  on  the 
one  hand,  he  did  not  regard  the  actual  facts  recorded  by  Mr. 
Murray  as  absolutely  inconsistent  with  his  own  theory  of 


AN  EPISCOPAL  "TRILOGY.  255 

subsidence,  on  the  other  hand,  he  did  not  believe  that  they 
necessitated  or  supported  the  hypothesis  advanced  by  Mr. 
Murray.  Mr.  Darwin's  attitude,  as  I  understood  it,  toward 
Mr.  Murray's  objections  to  the  theory  of  subsidence  was 
exactly  similar  to  that  maintained  by  him  with  respect  to 
Professor  Semper's  criticism,  which  was  of  a  very  similar 
character ;  and  his  position  with  regard  to  the  whole  question 
was  almost  identical  with  that  subsequently  so  clearly  defined 
by  Professor  Dana  in  his  well-known  articles  published  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Science  for  1885. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  how  any  one,  acquainted  with 
the  scientific  literature  of  the  last  seven  years,  could  possibly 
suggest  that  Mr.  Murray's  memoir  published  in  1880  had 
failed  to  secure  a  due  amount  of  attention.  Mr.  Murray,  by 
his  position  in  the  Challenger  office,  occupied  an  exceptionally 
favorable  position  for  making  his  views  widely  known ;  and 
he  had,  moreover,  the  singular  good  fortune  to  secure  from 
the  first  the  advocacy  of  so  able  and  brilliant  a  writer  as 
Professor  Archibald  Geikie,  who  in  a  special  discourse  and  in 
several  treatises  on  geology  and  physical  geology  very  strongly 
supported  the  new  theory.  It  would  be  an  endless  task  to 
attempt  to  give  references  to  the  various  scientific  journals 
which  have  discussed  the  subject,  but  I  may  add  that  every 
treatise  on  geology  which  has  been  published,  since  Mr.  Mur- 
ray's views  were  made  known,  has  dealt  with  his  observations 
at  considerable  length.  This  is  true  of  Professor  A.  H. 
Green's  Physical  Geology ',  published  in  1882 ;  of  Professor 
Prestwich's  Geology,  Chemical  and  Physical;  and  of  Pro- 
fessor James  Geikie's  Outlines  of  Geology,  published  in  1886. 
Similar  prominence  is  given  to  the  subject  in  De  Lapparent's 
Traite  de  Geologie,  published  in  1885,  and  in  Credner's 
Elemente  der  Geologie  which  has  appeared  during  the  present 
year.  If  this  be  a  "  conspiracy  of  silence,"  where,  alas !  can 
the  geological  speculator  seek  for  fame  ? — Yours  very  truly, 

John  W.  Judd. 

October  10, 1887. 


IX. 

AGNOSTICISM. 

Within  the  last  few  months  the  public  has  received  nmch 
and  varied  information  on  the  subject  of  agnostics,  their 
tenets,  and  even  their  future.  Agnosticism  exercised  the 
orators  of  the  Church  Congress  at  Manchester.*  It  has  been 
furnished  with  a  set  of  "  articles  "  fewer,  but  not  less  rigid, 
and  certainly  not  less  consistent  than  the  thirty-nine ;  its 
nature  has  been  analyzed,  and  its  future  severely  predicted 
by  the  most  eloquent  of  that  prophetical  school  whose 
Samuel  is  Auguste  Comte.  It  may  still  be  a  question,  how- 
ever, whether  the  public  is  as  much  the  wiser  as  might  be 
expected,  considering  all  the  trouble  that  has  been  taken  to 
enlighten  it.  Not  only  are  the  three  accounts  of  the  agnostic 
position  sadly  out  of  harmony  with  one  another,  but  I 
propose  to  show  cause  for  my  belief  that  all  three  must  be 
seriously  questioned  by  any  one  who  employs  the  term 
"  agnostic  "  in  the  sense  in  which  it  was  originally  used. 
The  learned  Principal  of  King's  College,  who  brought  the 
topic  of  Agnosticism  before  the  Church  Congress,  took  a 
short  and  easy  way  of  settling  the  business : — 

"  But  if  this  be  so,  for  a  man  to  urge,  as  an  escape  from  this 
article  of  belief,  that  he  has  no  means  of  a  scientific  knowledge 
of  the  unseen  world,  or  of  the  future,  is  irrelevant.  His  dif- 
ference from  Christians  lies  not  in  the  fact  that  he  has  no 
knowledge  of  these  things,  but  that  he  does  not  believe  the 

*  See  the  Official  Report  of  the  Church  Congress  held  at  Manchester^ 
October,  1888,  pp.  253,  254. 


AGNOSTICISM.  257 

authority  on  which  they  are  stated.  He  may  prefer  to  call 
himself  an  Agnostic ;  hut  his  real  name  is  an  older  one — he  is 
an  infidel;  that  is  to  say,  an  unbeliever.  The  word  infidel, 
perhaps,  carries  an  unpleasant  significance.  Perhaps  it  is  right 
that  it  should.  It  is,  and  it  ought  to  he,  an  unpleasant  thing 
for  a  man  to  have  to  say  plainly  that  he  does  not  believe  in 
Jesus  Christ."  * 

So  much  of  Dr.  Wace's  address  either  explicitly  or 
implicitly  concerns  me,  that  I  take  upon  myself  to  deal  with 
it ;  but  in  so  doing,  it  must  be  understood  that  I  speak  for 
myself  alone.  I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  any  sect  of 
Agnostics ;  and  if  there  be,  I  am  not  its  acknowledged 
prophet  or  pope.  I  desire  to  leave  to  the  Comtists  the  entire 
monopoly  of  the  manufacture  of  imitation  ecclesiasticism. 

Let  us  calmly  and  dispassionately  consider  Dr.  Wace's 
appreciation  of  agnosticism.  The  agnostic,  according  to  his 
view,  is  a  person  who  says  he  has  no  means  of  attaining  a 
scientific  knowledge  of  the  unseen  world  or  of  the  future  ;  by 
which  somewhat  loose  phraseology  Dr.  Wace  presumably 
means  the  theological  unseen  world  and  future.  I  can  not 
think  this  description  happy,  either  in  form  or  substance, 
but  for  the  present  it  may  pass.  Dr.  Wace  continues,  that  is 
not  "his  difference  from  Christians."  Are  there  then  any 
Christians  who  say  that  they  know  nothing  about  the  unseen 
world  and  the  future  ?  I  was  ignorant  of  the  fact,  but  I  am 
ready  to  accept  it  on  the  authority  of  a  professional  theolo- 
gian, and  I  proceed  to  Dr.  Wace's  next  proposition. 

The  real  state  of  the  case,  then,  is  that  the  agnostic  "  does 

*  [In  this  place  and  in  the  eleventh  essay,  there  are  references  to 
the  late  Archbishop  of  York  which  are  of  no  importance  to  my  main 
argument,  and  which  I  have  expunged  because  I  desire  to  obliterate 
the  traces  of  a  temporary  misunderstanding  with  a  man  of  rare  ability, 
candor,  and  wit,  for  whom  I  entertained  a  great  liking  and  no  less 
respect.  I  rejoice  to  think  now  of  the  (then)  Bishop's  cordial  hail  the 
first  time  we  met  after  our  little  skirmish,  "  "Well,  is  it  to  be  peace  or 
war?"  I  replied,  "A  little  of  both."  But  there  was  only  peace  when 
we  parted,  and  ever  after.] 
12 


258  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

not  believe  the  authority "  on  which  "  these  things "  are 
stated,  which  authority  is  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  simply  an  old- 
fashioned  "  infidel "  who  is  afraid  to  own  to  his  right  name. 
As  "  Presbyter  is  priest  writ  large,"  so  is  "  agnostic  "  the 
mere  Greek  equivalent  for  the  Latin  "  infidel."  There  is  an 
attractive  simplicity  about  this  solution  of  the  problem ;  and 
it  has  that  advantage  of  being  somewhat  offensive  to  the 
persons  attacked,  which  is  so  dear  to  the  less  refined  sort  of 
controversialist.  The  agnostic  says,  "  I  can  not  find  good 
evidence  that  so  and  so  is  true."  u  Ah,"  says  his  adversary, 
seizing  his  opportunity,  "  then  you  declare  that  Jesus  Christ 
was  untruthful,  for  he  said  so  and  so ; "  a  very  telling  method 
of  rousing  prejudice.  But  suppose  that  the  value  of  the 
evidence  as  to  what  Jesus  may  have  said  and  done,  and  as  to 
the  exact  nature  and  scope  of  his  authority,  is  just  that  which 
the  agnostic  finds  it  most  difficult  to  determine.  If  I  venture 
to  doubt  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  gave  the  command 
"  Up,  Guards,  and  at  'em  !  "  at  Waterloo,  I  do  not  think  that 
even  Dr.  Wace  would  accuse  me  of  disbelieving  the  Duke. 
Yet  it  would  be  just  as  reasonable  to  do  this  as  to  accuse  any 
one  of  denying  what  Jesus  said  before  the  preliminary  ques- 
tion as  to  what  he  did  say  is  settled. 

Now,  the  question  as  to  what  Jesus  really  said  and  did  is 
strictly  a  scientific  problem,  which  is  capable  of  solution  by 
no  other  methods  than  those  practiced  by  the  historian  and 
the  literary  critic.  It  is  a  problem  of  immense  difficulty, 
which  has  occupied  some  of  the  best  heads  in  Europe  for  the 
last  century ;  and  it  is  only  of  late  years  that  their  investiga- 
tions have  begun  to  converge  toward  one  conclusion.* 

*  Dr.  Wace  tells  us,  "  It  may  be  asked  how  far  we  can  rely  on  the 
accounts  we  possess  of  our  Lord's  teaching  on  these  subjects."  And 
he  seems  to  think  the  question  appropriately  answered  by  the  assertion 
that  it  "  ought  to  be  regarded  as  settled  by  M.  Renan's  practical  sur- 
render of  the  adverse  case."  I  thought  I  knew  M.  Renan's  works 
pretty  well,  but  I  have  contrived  to  miss  this  "  practical "  (I  wish  Dr. 
Wace  had  defined  the  scope  of  that  useful  adjective)  surrender.     How- 


AGNOSTICISM.  259 

That  kind  of  faith  which  Dr.  Wace  describes  and  lauds  is 
of  no  use  here.  Indeed,  he  himself  takes  pains  to  destroy  its 
evidential  value. 

"  What  made  the  Mahommedan  world?  Trust  and  faith 
in  the  declarations  and  assurances  of  Mahommed.  And 
what  made  the  Christian  world?  Trust  and  faith  in  the 
declarations  and  assurances  of  Jesus  Christ  and  His  Apostles  " 
(I.  c.  p.  253).  The  triumphant  tone  of  this  imaginary  cate- 
chism leads  me  to  suspect  that  its  author  has  hardly  appre- 
ciated its  full  import.  Presumably,  Dr.  Wace  regards 
Mahommed  as  an  unbeliever,  or,  to  use  the  term  which  he 
prefers,  infidel ;  and  considers  that  his  assurances  have  given 
rise  to  a  vast  delusion  which  has  led,  and  is  leading,  millions 
of  men  straight  to  everlasting  punishment.  And  this  being 
so,  the  "  Trust  and  faith  "  which  have  "  made  the  Mahom- 
dan  world,"  in  just  the  same  sense  as  they  have  "  made  the 
Christian  world,"  must  be  trust  and  faith  in  falsehood.  No 
man  who  has  studied  history,  or  even  attended  to  the  occur- 
rences of  every-day  life,  can  doubt  the  enormous  practical 
value  of  trust  and  faith  ;  but  as  little  will  he  be  inclined  to 
deny  that  this  practical  value  has  not  the  least  relation  to  the 
reality  of  the  objects  of  that  trust  and  faith.  In  examples  of 
patient  constancy  of  faith  and  of  unswerving  trust  the  Acta 
Marty  rum  do  not  excell  the  aninals  of  Babism.* 

The  discussion  upon  which  we  have  now  entered  goes  so 

ever,  as  Dr.  Wace  can  find  no  difficulty  in  pointing  out  the  passage 
of  M.  Renan's  writings,  by  which  he  feels  justified  in  making  his 
statement,  I  shall  wait  for  further  enlightenment,  contenting  myself, 
for  the  present,  with  remarking  that  if  M.  Renan  were  to  retract  and 
do  penance  in  Notre-Dame  to-morrow  for  any  contributions  to  Biblical 
criticism  that  may  be  specially  his  property,  the  main  results  of  that 
criticism,  as  they  are  set  forth  in  the  works  of  Strauss,  Baur,  Reuss, 
and  Volkmar,  for  example,  would  not  be  sensibly  affected. 

*  [See  De  Gobineau,  Les  Religions  et  les  Philosophies  dans  VAsie 
Centrale;  and  the  recently  published  work  of  Mr.  E.  G.  Browne,  The 
Episode  of  the  Bab.] 


260  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

thoroughly  to  the  root  of  the  whole  matter ;  the  question  of 
the  day  is  so  completely,  as  the  author  of  Robert  Elsmere 
says,  the  value  of  testimony,  that  I  shall  offer  no  apology  for 
following  it  out  somewhat  in  detail ;  and,  hy  way  of  giving 
substance  to  the  argument,  I  shall  base  what  I  have  to  say 
upon  a  case,  the  consideration  of  which  lies  strictly  within 
the  province  of  natural  science,  and  of  that  particular  part 
of  it  known  as  the  physiology  and  pathology  of  the  nervous 
system. 

I  find,  in  the  second  Gospel  (chap,  v.),  a  statement,  to  all 
appearance  intended  to  have  the  same  evidential  value  as 
any  other  contained  in  that  history.  It  is  the  well-known 
story  of  the  devils  who  were  cast  out  of  a  man,  and  ordered, 
or  permitted,  to  enter  into  a  herd  of  swine,  to  the  great  loss 
and  damage  of  the  innocent  Gerasene,  or  Gadarene,  pig  own- 
ers. There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  narrator  intends  to 
convey  to  his  readers  his  own  conviction  that  this  casting  out 
and  entering  in  were  effected  by  the  agency  of  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth ;  that,  by  speech  and  action,  Jesus  enforced  this  con- 
viction ;  nor  does  any  inkling  of  the  legal  and  moral  difficul- 
ties of  the  case  manifest  itself. 

On  the  other  hand,  everything  that  I  know  of  physio- 
logical and  pathological  science  leads  me  to  entertain  a  very 
strong  conviction  that  the  phenomena  ascribed  to  possession 
are  as  purely  natural  as  those  which  constitute  small -pox ; 
everything  that  I  know  of  anthropology  leads  me  to  think 
that  the  belief  in  demons  and  demoniacal  possession  is  a 
mere  survival  of  a  once  universal  superstition,  and  that  its 
persistence,  at  the  present  time,  is  pretty  much  in  the  in- 
verse ratio  of  the  general  instruction,  intelligence,  and  sound- 
judgment  of  the  population  among  whom  it  prevails.  Every- 
thing that  I  know  of  law  and  justice  convinces  me  that  the 
wanton  destruction  of  other  people's  property  is  a  misde- 
meanor of  evil  example.  Again,  the  study  of  history,  and 
especially  of  that  of  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  leaves  no  shadow  of  doubt  on  my  mind  that  the 


AGNOSTICISM.  201 

belief  in  the  reality  of  possession  and  of  witchcraft,  justly- 
based,  alike  by  Catholics  and  Protestants,  upon  this  and  in- 
numerable other  passages  in  both  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments, gave  rise,  through  the  special  influence  of  Christian 
ecclesiastics,  to  the  most  horrible  persecutions  and  judicial 
murders  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  innocent  men, 
women,  and  children.  And  when  I  reflect  that  the  record 
of  a  plain  and  simple  declaration  upon  such  an  occasion  as 
this,  that  the  belief  in  witchcraft  and  possession  is  wicked 
nonsense,  would  have  rendered  the  long  agony  of  mediaeval 
humanity  impossible,  I  am  prompted  to  reject,  as  dishonor- 
ing, the  supposition  that  such  declaration  was  withheld  out 
of  condescension  to  popular  error. 

"  Come  forth,  thou  unclean  spirit,  out  of  the  man  "  (Mark 
v.  8),*  are  the  words  attributed  to  Jesus.  If  I  declare,  as  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  doing,  that  I  utterly  disbelieve  in  the 
existence  of  "  unclean  spirits,"  and,  consequently,  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  their  "  coming  forth  "  out  of  a  man,  I  suppose  that 
Dr.  Wace  will  tell  me  I  am  disregarding  the  testimony  "  of 
our  Lord"  (I.  c.  p.  255).  For  if  these  words  were  really 
used,  the  most  resourceful  of  reconcilers  can  hardly  venture 
to  affirm  that  they  are  compatible  with  a  disbelief  in  "  these 
things."  As  the  learned  and  fair-minded,  as  well  as  ortho- 
dox, Dr.  Alexander  remarks,  in  an  editorial  note  to  the 
article  "  Demoniacs,"  in  the  Biblical  Cyclojocedia  (vol.  i.  p. 
664,  note)  :— 

"...  On  the  lowest  grounds  on  which  our  Lord  and  His 
Apostles  can  be  placed  they  must,  at  least,  be  regarded  as  honest 
men.  Now,  though  honest  speech  does  not  require  that  words 
should  be  used  always  and  only  in  their  etymological  sense,  it 
does  require  that  they  should  not  be  used  so  as  to  affirm  what 
the  speaker  knows  to  be  false.  While,  therefore,  our  Lord  and 
His  Apostles  might  use  the  word  baijiovi^eada^  or  the  phrase 
daifMovLov  ex€LVi  as  a  popular  description  of  certain  diseases,  with- 

*  Here,  as  always,  the  revised  version  is  cited. 


262  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

out  giving  in  to  the  belief  which  lay  at  the  source  of  such  a 
mode  of  expression,  they  could  not  speak  of  demons  entering 
into  a  man,  or  being  cast  out  of  him,  without  pledging  them- 
selves to  the  belief  of  an  actual  possession  of  the  man  by  the 
demons.  (Campbell,  Prel  Diss.  vi.  1,  10.)  If,  consequently, 
they  did  not  hold  this  belief,  they  spoke  not  as  honest  men. 

The  story  which  we  are  considering  does  not  rest  on  the 
authority  of  the  second  Gospel  alone.  The  third  confirms 
the  second,  especially  in  the  matter  of  commanding  the  un- 
clean spirit  to  come  out  of  the  man  (Luke  viii.  29);  and, 
although  the  first  Gospel  either  gives  a  different  version  of 
the  same  story,  or  tells  another  of  like  kind,  the  essential 
point  remains :  "  If  thou  cast  us  out,  send  us  away  into  the 
herd  of  swine.  And  He  said  unto  them :  Go  !  "  (Matt.  viii. 
31,  32). 

If  the  concurrent  testimony  of  the  three  synoptics,  then, 
is  really  sufficient  to  do  away  with  all  rational  doubt  as  to  a 
matter  of  fact  of  the  utmost  practical  and  speculative  im- 
portance— belief  or  disbelief  in  which  may  affect,  and  has 
affected,  men's  lives  and  their  conduct  toward  other  men  in 
the  most  serious  way — then  I  am  bound  to  believe  that  Jesus 
implicitly  affirmed  himself  to  possess  a  "  knowledge  of  the 
unseen  world,"  which  afforded  full  confirmation  of  the  be- 
lief in  demons  and  possession  current  among  his  contempo- 
raries. If  the  story  is  true,  the  mediaeval  theory  of  the  in- 
visible world  may  be,  and  probably  is,  quite  correct ;  and  the 
witchfinders,  from  Sprenger  to  Hopkins  and  Mather,  are 
much-maligned  men. 

On  the  other  hand,  humanity,  noting  the  frightful  con- 
sequences of  this  belief ;  common  sense,  observing  the  futility 
of  the  evidence  on  which  it  is  based,  in  all  cases  that  have 
been  properly  investigated ;  science,  more  and  more  seeing 
its  way  to  inclose  all  the  phenomena  of  so-called  "  posses- 
sion" within  the  domain  of  pathology,  so  far  as  they  are  not 
to  be  relegated  to  that  of  police — all  these  powerful  influ- 
ences concur  in  warning  us,  at  our  peril,  against  accepting 


AGNOSTICISM.  263 

the  belief  without  the  most  careful  scrutiny  of  the  authority 
on  which  it  rests. 

I  can  discern  no  escape  from  this  dilemma :  either  Jesus 
said  what  he  is  reported  to  have  said,  or  he  did  not.  In  the 
former  case,  it  is  inevitable  that  his  authority  on  matters 
connected  with  the  "  unseen  world "  should  be  roughly 
shaken ;  in  the  latter,  the  blow  falls  upon  the  authority  of 
the  synoptic  gospels.  If  their  report  on  a  matter  of  such 
stupendous  and  far-reaching  practical  import  as  this  is  un- 
trustworthy, how  can  we  be  sure  of  its  trustworthiness  in 
other  cases?  The  favorite  "earth,"  in  which  the  hard- 
pressed  reconciler  takes  refuge,  that  the  Bible  does  not  pro- 
fess to  teach  science,*  is  stopped  in  this  instance.  For  the 
question  of  the  existence  of  demons  and  of  possession  by 
them,  though  it  lies  strictly  within  the  province  of  science, 
is  also  of  the  deepest  moral  and  religious  significance.  If 
physical  and  mental  disorders  are  caused  by  demons,  Gregory 
of  Tours  and  his  contemporaries  rightly  considered  that 
relics  and  exorcists  were  more  useful  than  doctors  ;  the  grav- 
est questions  arise  as  to  the  legal  and  moral  responsibilities  of 
persons  inspired  by  demoniacal  impulses ;  and  our  whole  con- 
ception of  the  universe  and  of  our  relations  to  it  becomes 

*  Does  any  one  really  mean  to  say  that  there  is  any  internal  or  ex- 
ternal criterion  by  which  the  reader  of  a  biblical  statement,  in  which 
scientific  matter  is  contained,  is  enabled  to  judge  whether  it  is  to  be 
taken  au  serieux  or  not  ?  Is  the  account  of  the  Deluge,  accepted  as 
true  in  the  New  Testament,  less  precise  and  specific  than  that  of  the 
call  of  Abraham,  also  accepted  as  true  therein  %  By  what  mark  does 
the  story  of  the  feeding  with  manna  in  the  wilderness,  which  involves 
some  very  curious  scientific  problems,  show  that  it  is  meant  merely 
for  edification,  while  the  story  of  the  inscription  of  the  Law  on  stone 
by  the  hand  of  Jahveh  is  literally  true  %  If  the  story  of  the  Fall  is 
not  the  true  record  of  an  historical  occurrence,  what  becomes  of  Paul- 
ine theology  %  Yet  the  story  of  the  Fall  as  directly  conflicts  with  prob- 
ability, and  is  as  devoid  of  trustworthy  evidence,  as  that  of  the  Creation 
or  that  of  the  Deluge,  with  which  it  forms  an  harmoniously  legendary 
series. 


264  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

totally  different  from  what  it  would  be  on  the  contrary 
hypothesis. 

The  theory  of  life  of  an  average  mediaeval  Christian  was 
as  different  from  that  of  an  average  nineteenth-century  Eng- 
lishman as  that  of  a  West  African  negro  is  now,  in  these 
respects.  The  modern  world  is  slowly,  but  surely,  shaking 
off  these  and  other  monstrous  survivals  of  savage  delusions, 
and,  whatever  happens,  it  will  not  return  to  that  wallowing 
in  the  mire.  Until  the  contrary  is  proved,  I  venture  to 
doubt  whether,  at  this  present  moment,  any  Protestant 
theologian,  who  has  a  reputation  to  lose,  will  say  that  he 
believes  the  Gadarene  story. 

The  choice  then  lies  between  discrediting  those  who 
compiled  the  Gospel  biographies  and  disbelieving  the  Mas- 
ter, whom  they,  simple  souls,  thought  to  honor  by  preserving 
such  traditions  of  the  exercise  of  his  authority  over  Satan's 
invisible  world.  This  is  the  dilemma.  No  deep  scholarship, 
nothing  but  a  knowledge  of  the  revised  version  (on  which  it 
is  to  be  supposed  all  that  mere  scholarship  can  do  has  been 
done),  with  the  application  thereto  of  the  commonest  canons 
of  common  sense,  is  needful  to  enable  us  to  make  a  choice 
between  its  alternatives.  It  is  hardly  doubtful  that  the  story,  as 
told  in  the  first  Gospel,  is  merely  a  version  of  that  told  in  the 
second  and  third.  Nevertheless,  the  discrepancies  are  serious 
and  irreconcilable ;  and,  on  this  ground  alone,  a  suspension  of 
judgment,  at  the  least,  is  called  for.  But  there  is  a  great  deal 
more  to  be  said.  From  the  dawn  of  scientific  biblical 
criticism  until  the  present  day,  the  evidence  against  the  long- 
cherished  notion  that  the  three  synoptic  Gospels  are  the 
works  of  three  independent  authors,  each  prompted  by 
Divine  inspiration,  has  steadily  accumulated,  until,  at  the 
present  time,  there  is  no  visible  escape  from  the  conclusion 
that  each  of  the  three  is  a  compilation  consisting  of  a  ground- 
work common  to  all  three — the  threefold  tradition ;  and  of  a 
superstructure,  consisting,  firstly,  of  matter  common  to  it 
with  one  of  the  others,  and,  secondly,  of  matter  special  to 


AGNOSTICISM.  265 

each.  The  use  of  the  terms  "  groundwork "  and  "  super- 
structure "  by  no  means  implies  that  the  latter  must  be  of 
later  date  than  the  former.  On  the  contrary,  some  parts  of 
it  may  be  and  probably  are,  older  than  some  parts  of  the 
groundwork.* 

The  story  of  the  Gadarene  swine  belongs  to  the  ground- 
work ;  at  least,  the  essential  part  of  it,  in  which  the  belief  in 
demoniac  possession  is  expression,  does ;  and  therefore  the 
compilers  of  the  first,  second,  and  third  Gospels,  whoever 
they  were,  certainly  accepted  that  belief  (which,  indeed,  was 
universal  among  both  Jews  and  pagans  at  that  time),  and  at- 
tributed it  to  Jesus. 

What,  then,  do  we  know  about  the  originator,  or  origina- 
tors, of  this  groundwork — of  that  threefold  tradition  which 
all  three  witnesses  (in  Paley's  phrase)  agree  upon — that  we 
should  allow  their  mere  statements  to  outweigh  the  counter 
arguments  of  humanity,  of  common  sense,  of  exact  science, 
and  to  imperil  the  respect  which  all  would  be  glad  to  be  able 
to  render  to  their  Master  ? 

Absolutely  nothing. f  There  is  no  proof,  nothing  more 
than  a  fair  presumption,  that  any  one  of  the  Gospels  existed, 
in  the  state  in  which  we  find  it  in  the  authorized  version  of 
the  Bible,  before  the  second  century,  or,  in  other  "words, 
sixty  or  seventy  years  after  the  events  recorded.  And,  be- 
tween that  time  and  the  date  of  the  oldest  extant  manu- 
scripts of  the  Gospels,  there  is  no  telling  what  additions  and 
alterations  and  interpolations  may  have  been  made.     It  may 

*  See,  for  an  admirable  discussion  of  the  whole  subject,  Dr.  Abbott's 
article  on  the  Gospels  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica ;  and  the  re- 
markable monograph  by  Professor  Volkmar,  Jesus  Nazarenus  und  die 
erste  christliche  Zeit  (1882).  Whether  we  agree  with  the  conclusions  of 
these  writers  or  not,  the  method  of  critical  investigation  which  they 
adopt  is  unimpeachable. 

f  Notwithstanding  the  hard  words  shot  at  me  from  behind  the  hedge 
of  anonymity  by  a  writer  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Quarterly  Review, 
I  repeat,  without  the  slightest  fear  of  refutation,  that  the  four  Gospels, 
as  they  have  come  to  us,  are  the  work  of  unknown  writers. 


266  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

be  said  that  this  is  all  mere  speculation,  but  it  is  a  good  deal 
more.  As  competent  scholars  and  honest  men,  our  revisers 
have  felt  compelled  to  point  out  that  such  things  have  hap- 
pened even  since  the  date  of  the  oldest  known  manuscripts. 
The  oldest  two  copies  of  the  second  Gospel  end  with  the  8  th 
verse  of  the  16th  chapter ;  the  remaining  twelve  verses  are 
spurious,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  maker  of  the  addi- 
tion has  not  hesitated  to  introduce  a  speech  in  which  Jesus 
promises  his  disciples  that  "  in  My  name  shall  they  cast  out 
devils." 

The  other  passage  "  rejected  to  the  margin  "  is  still  more 
instructive.  It  is  that  touching  apologue,  with  its  profound 
ethical  sense,  of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery — which,  if  in- 
ternal evidence  were  an  infallible  guide,  might  well  be  affirmed 
to  be  a  typical  example  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus.  Yet,  say 
the  revisers,  pitilessly,  "  Most  of  the  ancient  authorities  omit 
John  vii.  53 — viii.  11."  Now  let  any  reasonable  man  ask 
himself  this  question.  If,  after  an  approximate  settlement 
of  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament,  and  even  later  than  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  literary  fabricators  had  the  skill 
and  the  audacity  to  make  such  additions  and  interpolations 
as  these,  what  may  they  have  done  when  no  one  had  thought 
of  a  canon ;  when  oral  tradition,  still  unfixed,  was  regarded 
as  more  valuable  than  such  written  records  as  may  have  ex- 
isted in  the  latter  portion  of  the  first  century  ?  Or,  to  take 
the  other  alternative,  if  those  who  gradually  settled  the  canon 
did  not  know  of  the  existence  of  the  oldest  codices  which 
have  come  down  to  us ;  or  if,  knowing  them,  they  rejected 
their  authority,  what  is  to  be  thought  of  their  competency  as 
critics  of  the  text  ? 

People  who  object  to  free  criticism  of  the  Christian 
Scriptures  forget  that  they  are  what  they  are  in  virtue  of 
very  free  criticism ;  unless  the  advocates  of  inspiration  are 
prepared  to  affirm  that  the  majority  of  influential  ecclesiastics 
during  several  centuries  were  safeguarded  against  error.  For, 
even  granting-  that  some  books  of  the  period  were  inspired, 


AGNOSTICISM.  267 

they  were  certainly  few  among  many ;  and  those  who  selected 
the  canonical  books,  unless  they  themselves  were  also  inspired, 
must  be  regarded  in  the  light  of  mere  critics,  and,  from  the 
evidence  they  have  left  of  their  intellectual  habits,  very  un- 
critical critics.  When  one  thinks  that  such  delicate  ques- 
tions as  those  involved  fell  into  the  hands  of  men  like  Papias 
(who  believed  in  the  famous  millenarian  grape  story) ;  of 
Irenaeus  with  his  "  reasons "  for  the  existence  of  only  four 
Gospels ;  and  of  such  calm  and  dispassionate  judges  as  Ter- 
tullian,  with  his  "  Credo  quia  impossibile : "  the  marvel  is 
that  the  selection  which  constitutes  our  New  Testament  is  as 
free  as  it  is  from  obviously  objectionable  matter.  The  apoc- 
ryphal Gospels  certainly  deserve  to  be  apocryphal ;  but  one 
may  suspect  that  a  little  more  critical  discrimination  would 
have  enlarged  the  Apocrypha  not  inconsiderably. 

At  this  point  a  very  obvious  objection  arises  and  deserves 
full  and  candid  consideration.  It  may  be  said  that  critical 
skepticism  carried  to  the  length  suggested  is  historical  pyr- 
rhonism  ;  that  if  we  are  to  altogether  discredit  an  ancient  or 
a  modern  historian,  because  he  has  assumed  fabulous  matter 
to  be  true,  it  will  be  as  well  to  give  up  paying  any  attention 
to  history.  It  may  be  said,  and  with  great  justice,  that  Egin- 
hard's  Life  of  Charlemagne  is  none  the  less  trustworthy  be- 
cause of  the  astounding  revelation  of  credulity,  of  lack  of 
judgment,  and  even  of  respect  for  the  eighth  commandment, 
which  he  has  unconsciously  made  in  the  History  of  the  Trans- 
lation of  the  Blessed  Marcellinus  and  Paul.  Or,  to  go  no 
further  back  than  the  last  number  of  this  Eeview,  surely  that 
excellent  lady,  Miss  Strickland,  is  not  to  be  refused  all  cre- 
dence because  of  the  myth  about  the  second  James's  remains, 
which  she  seems  to  have  unconsciously  invented. 

Of  course  this  is  perfectly  true.  I  am  afraid  there  is  no 
man  alive  whose  witness  could  be  accepted,  if  the  condition 
precedent  were  proof  that  he  had  never  invented  and  promul- 
gated a  myth.  In  the  minds  of  all  of  us  there  are  little 
places  here  and  there,  like  the  indistinguishable  spots  on  a 


268  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

rock  which  give  foothold  to  moss  or  stonecrop ;  on  which,  if 
the  germ  of  a  myth  fall,  it  is  certain  to  grow,  without  in  the 
least  degree  affecting  our  accuracy  or  truthfulness  elsewhere. 
Sir  "Walter  Scott  knew  that  he  could  not  repeat  a  story  with- 
out, as  he  said,  "  giving  it  a  new  hat  and  stick."  Most  of  us 
differ  from  Sir  Walter  only  in  not  knowing  about  this  tend- 
ency of  the  mythopceic  faculty  to  break  out  unnoticed.  But 
it  is  also  perfectly  true  that  the  mythopceic  faculty  is  not 
equally  active  in  all  minds,  nor  in  all  regions  and  under  all 
conditions  of  the  same  mind.  David  Hume  was  certainly 
not  so  liable  to  temptation  as  the  Venerable  Bede,  or  even  as 
some  recent  historians  who  could  be  mentioned ;  and  the 
most  imaginative  of  debtors,  if  he  owes  five  pounds,  never 
makes  an  obligation  to  pay  a  hundred  out  of  it.  The  rule  of 
common  sense  is  prima  facie  to  trust  a  witness  in  all  matters 
in  which  neither  his  self-interest,  his  passions,  his  prejudices, 
nor  that  love  of  the  marvelous,  which  is  inherent  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree  in  all  mankind,  are  strongly  concerned  ;  and, 
when  they  are  involved,  to  require  corroborative  evidence  in 
exact  proportion  to  the  contravention  of  probability  by  the 
thing  testified. 

Now,  in  the  Gadarene  affair,  I  do  not  think  I  am  unrea- 
sonably skeptical  if  I  say  that  the  existence  of  demons  who 
can  be  transferred  from  a  man  to  a  pig,  does  thus  contravene 
probability.  Let  me  be  perfectly  candid.  I  admit  I  have  no 
a  priori  objection  to  offer.  There  are  physical  things,  such 
as  tamim  and  tricliince,  which  can  be  transferred  from  men 
to  pigs,  and  vice  versa,  and  which  do  undoubtedly  produce 
most  diabolical  and  deadly  effects  on  both.  For  anything  I 
can  absolutely  prove  to  the  contrary,  there  may  be  spiritual 
things  capable  of  the  same  transmigration,  with  life  effects. 
Moreover  I  am  bound  to  add  that  perfectly  truthful  persons, 
for  whom  I  have  the  greatest  respect,  believe  in  stories  about 
spirits  of  the  present  day,  quite  as  improbable  as  that  we  are 
considering. 

So  I  declare^  as  plainly  as  I  can,  that  I  am  unable  to  show 


AGNOSTICISM.  269 

cause  why  these  transferable  devils  should  not  exist ;  nor  can 
I  deny  that,  not  merely  the  whole  Eoman  Church,  but  many 
Wacean  "  infidels  "  of  no  mean  repute,  do  honestly  and  firmly 
believe  that  the  activity  of  such  like  daemonic  beings  is  in  full 
swing  in  this  year  of  grace  1889. 

Nevertheless,  as  good  Bishop  Butler  says,  "  probability  is 
the  guide  of  life,"  and  it  seems  to  me  that  this  is  just  one  of 
the  cases  in  which  the  canon  of  credibility  and  testimony, 
which  I  have  ventured  to  lay  down,  has  full  force.  So  that, 
with  the  most  entire  respect  for  many  (by  no  means  for 
all)  of  our  witnesses  for  the  truth  of  daemonology,  ancient 
and  modern,  I  conceive  their  evidence  on  this  particular 
matter  to  be  ridiculously  insufficient  to  warrant  their  con- 
clusion.* 

After  what  has  been  said,  I  do  not  think  that  any  sensible 
man,  unless  he  happen  to  be  angry,  will  accuse  me  of  "  con- 
tradicting the  Lord  and  his  Apostles  "  if  I  reiterate  my  total 
disbelief  in  the  whole  Gadarene  story.  But,  if  that  story  is 
discredited,  all  the  other  stories  of  demoniac  possession  fall 
upon  suspicion.  And  if  the  belief  in  demons  and  demoniac 
possession,  which  forms  the  somber  background  of  the  whole 
picture  of  primitive  Christianity  presented  to  us  in  the  New 
Testament,  is  shaken,  what  is  to  be  said,  in  any  case,  of  the 

*  Their  arguments,  in  the  long  run,  are  always  reducible  to  one  form. 
Otherwise  trustworthy  witnesses  affirm  that  such  and  such  events  took 
place.  These  events  are  inexplicable,  except  the  agency  of  "  spirits  "  is 
admitted.     Therefore  "  spirits  "  were  the  cause  of  the  phenomena. 

And  the  heads  of  the  reply  are  always  the  same.  Remember  Goethe's 
aphorism :  "  Alles  factische  ist  schon  Theorie."  Trustworthy  witnesses 
are  constantly  deceived,  or  deceive  themselves,  in  their  interpretation  of 
sensible  phenomena.  No  one  can  prove  that  the  sensible  phenomena,  in 
these  cases,  could  be  caused  only  by  the  agency  of  spirits :  and  there  is 
abundant  ground  for  believing  that  they  may  be  produced  in  other  ways. 
Therefore,  the  utmost  that  can  be  reasonably  asked  for,  on  the  evidence 
as  it  stands,  is  suspension  of  judgment.  And,  on  the  necessity  for  even 
that  suspension,  reasonable  men  may  differ,  according  to  their  views  of 
probability. 


270  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

uncorroborated  testimony  of  the  Gospels  with  respect  to  "  the 
unseen  world  "  ? 

I  am  not  aware  that  I  have  been  influenced  by  any  more 
bias  in  regard  to  the  Gadarene  story  than  I  have  been  in  deal- 
ing with  other  cases  of  like  kind  the  investigation  of  which 
has  interested  me.  I  was  brought  up  in  the  strictest  school 
of  evangelical  orthodoxy ;  and  when  I  was  old  enough  to 
think  for  myself,  I  started  upon  my  journey  of  inquiry  with 
little  doubt  about  the  general  truth  of  what  I  had  been 
taught ;  and  with  that  feeling  of  the  unpleasantness  of  being 
called  an  "  infidel "  which,  we  are  told,  is  so  right  and  proper. 
Near  my  journey's  end,  I  find  myself  in  a  condition  of  some- 
thing more  than  mere  doubt  about  these  matters. 

In  the  course  of  other  inquiries,  I  have  had  to  do  with 
fossil  remains  which  looked  quite  plain  at  a  distance,  and  be- 
came more  and  more  indistinct  as  I  tried  to  define  their  out- 
line by  close  inspection.  There  was  something  there — some- 
thing which,  if  I  could  win  assurance  about  it,  might  mark  a 
new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  earth ;  but,  study  as  long  as 
I  might,  certainty  eluded  my  grasp.  So  has  it  been  with  me 
in  my  efforts  to  define  the  grand  figure  of  Jesus  as  it  lies  in 
the  primary  strata  of  Christian  literature.  Is  he  the  kindly, 
peaceful  Christ  depicted  in  the  Catacombs?  Or  is  he  the 
stern  Judge  who  frowns  above  the  altar  of  SS.  Cosmas  and 
Damianus  ?  Or  can  he  be  rightly  represented  by  the  bleed- 
ing ascetic,  broken  down  by  physical  pain,  of  too  many  me- 
diaeval pictures?  Are  we  to  accept  the  Jesus  of  the  second, 
or  the  Jesus  of  the  fourth  Gospel,  as  the  true  Jesus  ?  What 
did  he  really  say  and  do ;  and  how  much  that  is  attributed  to 
him,  in  speech  and  action,  is  the  embroidery  of  the  various 
parties  into  which  his  followers  tended  to  split  themselves 
within  twenty  years  of  his  death,  when  even  the  threefold 
tradition  was  only  nascent? 

If  any  one  will  answer  these  questions  for  me  with  some- 
thing more  to  the  point  than  feeble  talk  about  the  "  cowardice 
of  agnosticism;"  I  shall  be  deeply  his  debtor.     Unless  and 


AGNOSTICISM.  271 

until  they  are  satisfactorily  answered,  I  say  of  agnosticism  in 
this  matter,  "  J'y  suis,  etfy  reste." 

But,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  asserted  that  I  have  no  business 
to  call  myself  an  agnostic ;  that  if  I  am  not  a  Christian  I  am 
an  infidel ;  and  that  I  ought  to  call  myself  by  that  name  of 
"  unpleasant  significance."  Well,  I  do  not  care  much  what  I 
am  called  by  other  people,  and  if  I  had  at  my  side  all  those 
who,  since  the  Christian  era,  have  been  called  infidels  by  other 
folks,  I  could  not  desire  better  company.  If  these  are  my  an- 
cestors, I  prefer,  with  the  old  Frank,  to  be  with  them  where- 
ever  they  are.  But  there  are  several  points  in  Dr.  Wace's 
contention  which  must  be  elucidated  before  I  can  even  think 
of  undertaking  to  carry  out  his  wishes.  I  must,  for  instance, 
know  what  a  Christian  is.  Now  what  is  a  Christian  ?  By 
whose  authority  is  the  signification  of  that  term  defined  ?  Is 
there  any  doubt  that  the  immediate  followers  of  Jesus,  the 
"  sect  of  the  Nazarenes,"  were  strictly  orthodox  Jews,  differing 
from  other  Jews  not  more  than  the  Sadducees,  the  Pharisees, 
and  the  Essenes  differed  from  one  another ;  in  fact,  only  in 
the  belief  that  the  Messiah,  for  whom  the  rest  of  their  nation 
waited,  had  come  ?  Was  not  their  chief,  "  James,  the  brother 
of  the  Lord,"  reverenced  alike  by  Sadducee,  Pharisee,  and 
Nazarene  ?  At  the  famous  conference  which,  according  to 
the  Acts,  took  place  at  Jerusalem,  does  not  James  declare 
that  "  myriads  "  of  Jews,  who  by  that  time  had  become  Naza- 
renes,  were  "  all  zealous  for  the  Law  "  ?  Was  not  the  name 
of  "  Christian  "  first  used  to  denote  the  converts  to  the  doc- 
trine promulgated  by  Paul  and  Barnabas  at  Antioch  ?  Does 
the  subsequent  history  of  Christianity  leave  any  doubt  that, 
from  this  time  forth,  the  "  little  rift  within  the  lute  "  caused 
by  the  new  teaching-,  developed,  if  not  inaugurated,  at  Anti- 
och, grew  wider  and  wider,  until  the  two  types  of  doctrine 
irreconcilably  diverged  ?  Did  not  the  primitive  ISTazarenism, 
or  Ebionism,  develop  into  the  Nazarenism,  and  Ebionism, 
and  Elkasaitism  of  later  ages,  and  finally  die  out  in  obscurity 
and  condemnation  as  damnable  heresy;  while  the  younger 


272  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

doctrine  throve  and  pushed  out  its  shoots  into  that  endless 
variety  of  sects,  of  which  the  three  strongest  survivors  are  the 
Eoman  and  Greek  Churches  and  modern  Protestantism  ? 

Singular  state  of  things !  If  I  were  to  profess  the  doc- 
trine which  was  held  by  "  James,  the  brother  of  the  Lord," 
and  by  every  one  of  the  "  myriads  "  of  his  followers  and  co- 
religionists in  Jerusalem  up  to  twenty  or  thirty  years  after 
the  Crucifixion  (and  one  knows  not  how  much  later  at  Pella), 
I  should  be  condemned  with  unanimity  as  an  ebionizing 
heretic  by  the  Roman,  Greek,  and  Protestant  Churches! 
And,  probably,  this  hearty  and  unanimous  condemnation  of 
the  creed  held  by  those  who  were  in  the  closest  personal  rela- 
tion with  their  Lord  is  almost  the  only  point  upon  which 
they  would  be  cordially  of  one  mind.  On  the  other  hand, 
though  I  hardly  dare  imagine  such  a  thing,  I  very  much  fear 
that  the  "  pillars  "  of  the  primitive  Hierosolymitan  Church 
would  have  considered  Dr.  Wace  an  infidel.  No  one  can  read 
the  famous  second  chapter  of  Galatians  and  the  book  of  Rev- 
elations without  seeing  how  narrow  was  even  Paul's  escape 
from  a  similar  fate.  And,  if  ecclesiastical  history  is  to  be 
trusted,  the  thirty-nine  articles,  be  they  right  or  wrong,  di- 
verge from  the  primitive  doctrine  of  the  Nazarenes  vastly 
more  than  even  Pauline  Christianity  did. 

But,  further  than  this,  I  have  great  difficulty  in  assuring 
myself  that  even  James,  "  the  brother  of  the  Lord,"  and  his 
"  myriads  "  of  Nazarenes,  properly  represented  the  doctrines 
of  their  Master.  For  it  is  constantly  asserted  by  our  modern 
"  pillars  "  that  one  of  the  chief  features  of  the  work  of  Jesus 
was  the  instauration  of  Religion  by  the  abolition  of  what  our 
sticklers  for  articles  and  liturgies,  with  unconscious  humor, 
call  the  narrow  restrictions  of  the  Law.  Yet,  if  James  knew 
this,  how  could  the  bitter  controversy  with  Paul  have  arisen ; 
and  why  did  one  or  the  other  side  not  quote  any  of  the 
various  sayings  of  Jesus,  recorded  in  the  Gospels,  which 
directly  bear  on  the  question — sometimes,  apparently,  in  op- 
posite directions  ? 


AGNOSTICISM.  273 

So  if  I  am  asked  to  call  myself  an  "  infidel,"  I  reply,  To 
what  doctrine  do  you  ask  me  to  be  faithful  ?  Is  it  that  con- 
tained in  the  Nicene  and  the  Athanasian  Creeds?  My  firm 
belief  is  that  the  Nazarenes,  say  of  the  year  40,  headed  by 
James,  would  have  stopped  their  ears  and  thought  worthy  of 
stoning  the  audacious  man  who  propounded  it  to  them.  Is  it 
contained  in  the  so-called  Apostles'  Creed  ?  I  am  pretty  sure 
that  even  that  would  have  created  a  recalcitrant  commotion 
at  Pella  in  the  year  70,  among  the  Nazarenes  of  Jerusalem, 
who  had  fled  from  the  soldiers  of  Titus.  And  yet,  if  the  un- 
adulterated tradition  of  the  teachings  of  "  the  Nazarene  "  were 
to  be  found  anywhere,  it  surely  should  have  been  amid  those 
not  very  aged  disciples  who  may  have  heard  them  as  they 
were  delivered. 

Therefore,  however  sorry  I  may  be  to  be  unable  to  demon- 
strate that,  if  necessary,  I  should  not  be  afraid  to  call  myself 
an  "  infidel,"  I  can  not  do  it.  "  Infidel  "  is  a  term  of  reproach, 
which  Christians  and  Mahommedans,  in  their  modesty,  agree 
to  apply  to  those  who  differ  from  them.  If  he  had  only 
thought  of  it,  Dr.  Wace  might  have  used  the  term  "  mis- 
creant," which,  with  the  same  etymological  signification,  has 
the  advantage  of  being  still  more  "  unpleasant "  to  the  per- 
sons to  whom  it  is  applied.  But  why  should  a  man  be  ex- 
pected to  call  himself  a  "  miscreant "  or  an  "  infidel  "  ?  That 
St.  Patrick  "  had  two  birthdays  because  he  was  a  twin  "  is  a 
reasonable  and  intelligible  utterance  beside  that  of  the  man 
who  should  declare  himself  to  be  an  infidel  on  the  ground  of 
denying  his  own  belief.  It  may  be  logically,  if  not  ethically, 
defensible  that  a  Christian  should  call  a  Mahommedan  an  in- 
fidel and  vice  versa ;  but,  on  Dr.  Wace's  principles,  both 
ought  to  call  themselves  infidels,  because  each  applies  the 
term  to  the  other. 

Now  I  am  afraid  that  all  the  Mahommedan  world  would 
agree  in  reciprocating  that  appellation  to  Dr.  Wace  himself. 
I  once  visited  the  Hazar  Mosque,  the  great  University  of 
Mahommedanism,  in  Cairo,  in  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  I 


274  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

was  unprovided  with  proper  authority.  A  swarm  of  angry 
undergraduates,  as  I  suppose  I  ought  to  call  them,  came  buzz- 
ing about  me  and  my  guide  ;  and  if  I  had  known  Arabic,  I 
suspect  that  "  dog  of  an  infidel "  would  have  been  by  no 
means  the  most  "unpleasant  "  of  the  epithets  showered  upon 
me,  before  I  could  explain  and  apologize  for  the  mistake.  If 
I  had  had  the  pleasure  of  Dr.  Wace's  company  on  that  occa- 
sion, the  undiscriminative  followers  of  the  Prophet  would,  I 
am  afraid,  have  made  no  difference  between  us;  not  even  if 
they  had  known  that  he  was  the  head  of  an  orthodox  Chris- 
tian seminary.  And  I  have  not  the  smallest  doubt  that  even 
one  of  the  learned  mollahs,  if  his  grave  courtesy  would  have 
permitted  him  to  say  anything  offensive  to  men  of  another 
mode  of  belief,  would  have  told  us  that  he  wondered  we  did 
not  find  it  "  very  unpleasant "  to  disbelieve  in  the  Prophet  of 
Islam. 

From  what  precedes,  I  think  it  becomes  sufficiently  clear 
that  Dr.  Wace's  account  of  the  origin  of  the  name  of  "  Agnos- 
tic "  is  quite  wrong.  Indeed,  I  am  bound  to  add  that  very 
slight  effort  to  discover  the  truth  would  have  convinced  him 
that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  term  arose  otherwise.  I  am 
loath  to  go  over  an  old  story  once  more ;  but  more  than  one 
object  which  I  have  in  view  will  be  served  by  telling  it  a  little 
more  fully  than  it  has  yet  been  told. 

Looking  back  nearly  fifty  years,  I  see  myself  as  a  boy, 
whose  education  had  been  interrupted,  and  who,  intellectu- 
ally, was  left  for  some  years,  altogether  to  his  own  devices. 
At  that  time,  I  was  a  voracious  and  omnivorous  reader ;  a 
dreamer  and  speculator  of  the  first  water,  well  endowed  with 
that  splendid  courage  in  attacking  any  and  every  subject, 
which  is  the  blessed  compensation  of  youth  and  inexperience. 
Among  the  books  and  essays,  on  all  sorts  of  topics  from  meta- 
physics to  heraldry,  which  I  read  at  this  time,  two  left  indel- 
ible impressions  on  my  mind.  One  was  Guizot's  History  of 
Civilization,  the  other  was  Sir  William  Hamilton's  essay  On 
the  Philosophy  of  the  Unconditioned,  which  I  came  upon,  by 


AGNOSTICISM.  275 

chance,  in  an  odd  volume  of  the  Edinburgh  Review.  The 
latter  was  certainly  strange  reading  for  a  boy,  and  I  could  not 
possibly  have  understood  a  great  deal  of  it ;  *  nevertheless,  I 
devoured  it  with  avidity,  and  it  stamped  upon  my  mind  the 
strong  conviction  that,  on"  even  the  most  solemn  and  impor- 
tant of  questions,  men  are  apt  to  take  cunning  phrases  for 
answers;  and  that  the  limitation  of  our  faculties,  in  a  great 
number  of  cases,  renders  real  answers  to  such  questions, 
not  merely  actually  impossible,  but  theoretically  inconceiv- 
able. 

Philosophy  and  history  having  laid  hold  of  me  in  this 
eccentric  fashion,  have  never  loosened  their  grip.  I  have  no 
pretension  to  be  an  expert  in  either  subject ;  but  the  turn 
for  philosophical  and  historical  reading,  which  rendered 
Hamilton  and  Guizot  attractive  to  me,  has  not  only  filled 
many  lawful  leisure  hours,  and  still  more  sleepless  ones,  with 
the  repose  of  changed  mental  occupation,  but  has  not  unfre- 
quently  disputed  my  proper  work-time  with  my  liege  lady, 
Natural  Science.  In  this  way,  I  have  found  it  possible  to 
cover  a  good  deal  of  ground  in  the  territory  of  philosophy; 
and  all  the  more  easily  that  I  have  never  cared  much  about 
A's  or  B's  opinions,  but  have  rather  sought  to  know  what 
answer  he  had  to  give  to  the  questions  I  had  to  put  to  him — 
that  of  the  limitation  of  possible  knowledge  being  the  chief. 
The  ordinary  examiner,  with  his  "  State  the  views  of  So-and- 
so,"  would  have  floored  me  at  any  time.  If  he  had  said  what 
do  you  think  about  any  given  problem,  I  might  have  got  on 
fairly  well. 

The  reader  who  has  had  the  patience  to  follow  the  en- 
forced, but  unwilling,  egotism  of  this  veritable  history  (espe- 
cially if  his  studies  have  led  him  in  the  same  direction),  will 
now  see  why  my  mind  steadily  gravitated  toward  the  con- 

*  Yet  I  must  somehow  have  laid  hold  of  the  pith  of  the  matter,  for, 
many  years  afterward,  when  Dean  Mansell's  Bampton  lectures  were 
published,  it  seemed  to  me  I  already  knew  all  that  this  eminently  agnos- 
tic thinker  had  to  tell  me. 


276  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

elusions  of  Hume  and  Kant,  so  well  stated  by  the  latter  in  a 
sentence,  which  I  have  quoted  elsewhere. 

"  The  greatest  and  perhaps  the  sole  use  of  all  philosophy 
of  pure  reason  is,  after  all,  merely  negative,  since  it  serves  not 
as  an  organon  for  the  enlargement  [of  knowledge],  but  as  a 
discipline  for  its  delimitation ;  and,  instead  of  discovering 
truth,  has  only  the  modest  merit  of  preventing  error."* 

"When  I  reached  intellectual  maturity  and  began  to  ask 
myself  whether  I  was  an  atheist,  a  theist,  or  a  pantheist ;  a 
materialist  or  an  idealist;  a  Christian  or  a  freethinker;  I 
found  that  the  more  I  learned  and  reflected,  the  less  ready 
was  the  answer ;  until,  at  last,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
I  had  neither  art  nor  part  with  any  of  these  denominations, 
except  the  last.  The  one  thing  in  which  most  of  these  good 
people  were  agreed  was  the  one  thing  in  which  I  differed 
from  them.  They  were  quite  sure  they  had  attained  a  cer- 
tain "gnosis," — had,  more  or  less  successfully,  solved  the 
problem  of  existence ;  while  I  was  quite  sure  I  had  not,  and 
had  a  pretty  strong  conviction  that  the  problem  was  insoluble. 
And,  with  Hume  and  Kant  on  my  side,  I  could  not  think  my- 
self presumptuous  in  holding  fast  by  that  opinion.  Like  Dante, 

Nel  mezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita 
Mi  ritrovai  per  una  selva  oscura, 

but,  unlike  Dante,  I  can  not  add, 

Che  la  diritta  via  era  smarrita. 

On  the  contrary,  I  had,  and  have,  the  firmest  conviction  that 
I  never  left  the  "  verace  via  "—the  straight  road ;  and  that 
this  road  led  nowhere  else  but  into  the  dark  depths  of  a  wild 
and  tangled  forest.  And  though  I  have  found  leopards  and 
lions  in  the  path ;  though  I  have  made  abundant  acquaint- 
ance with  the  hungry  wolf,  that  "  with  privy  paw  devours 
apace  and  nothing  said,"  as  another  great  poet  says  of  the 
ravening  beast ;  and  though  no  friendly  specter  has  even  yet 

*  KritiJc  der  reinen  Vernunft.    Edit.  Hartenstein,  p.  256. 


AGNOSTICISM.  277 

offered  his  guidance,  I  was,  and  am,  minded  to  go  straight 
on,  until  I  either  come  out  on  the  other  side  of  the  wood,  or 
find  there  is  no  other  side  to  it,  at  least,  none  attainable  by  me. 

This  was  my  situation  when  I  had  the  good  fortune  to 
find  a  place  among  the  members  of  that  remarkable  confra- 
ternity of  antagonists,  long  since  deceased,  but  of  green  and 
pious  memory,  the  Metaphysical  Society.  Every  variety  of 
philosophical  and  theological  opinion  was  represented  there, 
and  expressed  itself  with  entire  openness ;  most  of  my  col- 
leagues were  -ists  of  one  sort  or  another ;  and,  however  kind 
and  friendly  they  might  be,  I,  the  man  without  a  rag  of  a 
label  to  cover  himself  with,  could  not  fail  to  have  some  of 
the  uneasy  feelings  which  must  have  beset  the  historical  fox 
when,  after  leaving  the  trap  in  which  his  tail  remained,  he 
presented  himself  to  his  normally  elongated  companions.  So 
I  took  thought,  and  invented  what  I  conceived  to  be  the  ap- 
propriate title  of  "  agnostic."  It  came  into  my  head  as  sug- 
gestively antithetic  to  the  "  gnostic  "  of  Church  history,  who 
professed  to  know  so  much  about  the  very  things  of  which  I 
was  ignorant ;  and  I  took  the  earliest  opportunity  of  parad- 
ing it  at  our  Society,  to  show  that  I,  too,  had*  a  tail,  like  the 
other  foxes.  To  my  great  satisfaction,  the  term  took ;  and 
when  the  Spectator  had  stood  godfather  to  it,  any  suspicion  in 
the  minds  of  respectable  people,  that  a  knowledge  of  its  par- 
entage might  have  awakened,  was,  of  course,  completely  lulled. 

That  is  the  history  of  the  origin  of  the  terms  "  agnostic  " 
and  "  agnosticism  "  ;  and  it  will  be  observed  that  it  does  not 
quite  agree  with  the  confident  assertion  of  the  reverend  Prin- 
cipal of  King's  College,  that  "  the  adoption  of  the  term  ag- 
nostic is  only  an  attempt  to  shift  the  issue,  and  that  it 
involves  a  mere  evasion "  in  relation  to  the  Church  and 
Christianity.* 

The  last  objection  (I  rejoice,  as  much  as  my  readers  must 
do,  that  it  is  the  last)  which  I  have  to  take  to  Dr.  Wace's  de- 

*  Report  of  the  Church  Congress,  Manchester,  1888,  p.  2  j2. 


278  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

liverance  before  the  Church  Congress  arises,  I  am  sorry  to 
say,  on  a  question  of  morality. 

"  It  is,  and  it  ought  to  be,"  authoritatively  declares  this 
official  representative  of  Christian  ethics,  "  an  unpleasant 
thing  for  a  man  to  have  to  say  plainly  that  he  does  not  be- 
lieve in  Jesus  Christ "  (I  c  p.  254). 

Whether  it  is  so  depends,  I  imagine,  a  good  deal  on 
whether  the  man  was  brought  up  in  a  Christian  household 
or  not.  I  do  not  see  why  it  should  be  "  unpleasant "  for  a 
Mahommedan  or  Buddhist  to  say  so.  But  that  "  it  ought  to 
be  "  unpleasant  for  any  man  to  say  anything  which  he  sin- 
cerely, and  after  due  deliberation,  believes,  is,  to  my  mind,  a 
proposition  of  the  most  profoundly  immoral  character.  I 
verily  believe  that  the  great  good  which  has  been  effected  in 
the  world  by  Christianity  has  been  largely  counteracted  by 
the  pestilent  doctrine  on  which  all  the  Churches  have  in- 
sisted, that  honest  disbelief  in  their  more  or  less  astonishing 
creeds  is  a  moral  offense,  indeed  a  sin  of  the  deepest  dye,  de- 
serving and  involving  the  same  future  retribution  as  murder 
and  robbery.  If  we  could  only  see,  in  one  view,  the  torrents 
of  hypocrisy  and  cruelty,  the  lies,  the  slaughter,  the  violations 
of  every  obligation  of  humanity,  which  have  flowed  from 
this  source  along  the  course  of  the  history  of  Christian  na- 
tions, our  worst  imaginations  of  Hell  would  pale  beside  the 
vision. 

A  thousand  times,  no  !  It  ought  not  to  be  unpleasant  to 
say  that  which  one  honestly  believes  or  disbelieves.  That  it 
so  constantly  is  painful  to  do  so,  is  quite  enough  obstacle  to 
the  progress  of  mankind  in  that  most  valuable  of  all  qualities, 
honesty  of  word  or  of  deed,  without  erecting  a  sad  concomi- 
tant of  human  weakness  into  something  to  be  admired  and 
cherished.  The  bravest  of  soldiers  often,  and  very  naturally, 
"  feel  it  unpleasant "  to  go  into  action ;  but  a  court-martial 
which  did  its  duty  would  make  short  work  of  the  officer  who 
promulgated  the  doctrine  that  his  men  ought  to  feel  their 
duty  unpleasant. 


AGNOSTICISM.  279 

I  am  very  well  aware,  as  I  suppose  most  thoughtful  people 
are  in  these  times,  that  the  process  of  breaking  away  from 
old  beliefs  is  extremely  unpleasant ;  and  I  am  much  disposed 
to  think  that  the  encouragement,  the  consolation,  and  the 
peace  afforded  to  earnest  believers  in  even  the  worst  forms  of 
Christianity  are  of  great  practical  advantage  to  them.  What 
deductions  must  be  made  from  this  gain  on  the  score  of  the 
harm  done  to  the  citizen  by  the  ascetic  other- worldliness  of 
logical  Christianity;  to  the  ruler,  by  the  hatred,  malice,  and 
all  uncharitableness  of  sectarian  bigotry  ;  to  the  legislator,  by 
the  spirit  of  exclusiveness  and  domination  of  those  that  count 
themselves  pillars  of  orthodoxy ;  to  the  philosopher,  by  the 
restraints  on  the  freedom  of  learning  and  teaching  which 
every  Church  exercises,  when  it  is  strong  enough  ;  to  the  con- 
scientious soul,  by  the  introspective  hunting  after  sins  of  the 
mint  and  cummin  type,  the  fear  of  theological  error,  and  the 
overpowering  terror  of  possible  damnation,  which  have  ac- 
companied the  Churches  like  their  shadow,  I  need  not  now 
consider ;  but  they  are  assuredly  not  small.  If  agnostics  lose 
heavily  on  the  one  side,  they  gain  a  good  deal  on  the  other. 
People  who  talk  about  the  comforts  of  belief  appear  to  forget 
its  discomforts ;  they  ignore  the  fact  that  the  Christianity  of 
the  Churches  is  something  more  than  faith  in  the  ideal  per- 
sonality of  Jesus,  which  they  create  for  themselves,  plus  so 
much  as  can  be  carried  into  practice,  without  disorganizing 
civil  society,  of  the  maxims  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
Trip  in  morals  or  in  doctrine  (especially  in  doctrine),  with- 
out due  repentance  or  retractation,  or  fail  to  get  properly 
baptized  before  you  die,  and  a  plebiscite  of  the  Christians  of 
Europe,  if  they  were  true  to  their  creeds,  would  affirm  your 
everlasting  damnation  by  an  immense  majority. 

Preachers,  orthodox  and  heterodox,  din  into  our  ears  that 
the  world  can  not  get  on  without  faith  of  some  sort.  There 
is  a  sense  in  which  that  is  as  eminently  as  obviously  true ; 
there  is  another  one  which,  in  my  judgment,  is  as  eminently 
as  obviously  false,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  hortatory,  or 


280  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

pulpit,  mind  is  apt  to  oscillate  between  the  false  and  the  true 
meanings,  without  being  aware  of  the  fact. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  ground  of  every  one  of  our  ac- 
tions, and  the  validity  of  all  our  reasonings,  rests  upon  the 
great  act  of  faith,  which  leads  us  to  take  the  experience  of 
the  past  as  a  safe  guide  in  our  dealings  with  the  present  and 
the  future.  From  the  nature  of  ratiocination  it  is  obvious 
that  the  axioms  on  which  it  is  based  can  not  be  demonstrated 
by  ratiocination.  It  is  also  a  trite  observation  that,  in  the 
business  of  life,  we  constantly  take  the  most  serious  action 
upon  evidence  of  an  utterly  insufficient  character.  But  it  is 
surely  plain  that  faith  is  not  necessarily  entitled  to  dispense 
with  ratiocination  because  ratiocination  can  not  dispense 
with  faith  as  a  starting-point ;  and  that  because  we  are  often 
obliged,  by  the  pressure  of  events,  to  act  on  very  bad  evidence, 
it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  proper  to  act  on  such  evidence 
when  the  pressure  is  absent. 

The  writer  of  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews  tells  us  that 
"  faith  is  the  assurance  of  things  hoped  for,  the  proving  of 
things  not  seen."  In  the  authorized  version  "  substance  " 
stands  for  "  assurance,"  and  "  evidence  "  for  "  proving."  The 
question  of  the  exact  meaning  of  the  two  words,  viroo-Tao-is 
and  SUyxos,  affords  a  fine  field  of  discussion  for  the  scholar 
and  the  metaphysician.  But  I  fancy  we  shall  be  not  far  from 
the  mark  if  we  take  the  writer  to  have  had  in  his  mind  the 
profound  psychological  truth  that  men  constantly  feel  certain 
about  things  for  which  they  strongly  hope,  but  have  no  evi- 
dence, in  the  legal  or  logical  sense  of  the  word  ;  and  he  calls 
this  feeling  "faith."  I  may  have  the  most  absolute  faith 
that  a  friend  has  not  committed  the  crime  of  which  he  is 
accused.  In  the  early  days  of  English  history,  if  my  friend 
could  have  obtained  a  few  more  compurgators  of  a  like  robust 
faith,  he  would  have  been  acquitted.  At  the  present  day,  if 
I  tendered  myself  as  a  witness  on  that  score,  the  judge  would 
tell  me  to  stand  down,  and  the  youngest  barrister  would 
smile  at  my  simplicity.     Miserable  indeed  is  the  man  who 


AGNOSTICISM.  281 

has  not  such  faith  in  some  of  his  fellowmen — only  less  miser- 
able than  the  man  who  allows  himself  to  forget  that  such 
faith  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  evidence ;  and  when  his  faith 
is  disappointed,  as  will  happen  now  and  again,  turns  Timon 
and  blames  the  universe  for  his  own  blunders.  And  so,  if  a 
man  can  find  a  friend,  the  hypostasis  of  all  his  hopes,  the 
mirror  of  his  ethical  ideal,  in  the  Jesus  of  any,  or  all,  of  the 
Gospels,  let  him  live  by  faith  in  that  ideal.  Who  shall  or 
can  forbid  him  ?  But  let  him  not  delude  himself  with  the 
notion  that  his  faith  is  evidence  of  the  objective  reality  of 
that  in  which  he  trusts.  Such  evidence  is  to  be  obtained 
only  by  the  use  of  the  methods  of  science,  as  applied  to 
history  and  to  literature,  and  it  amounts  at  present  to  very 
little. 

It  appears  that  Mr.  Gladstone  some  time  ago  asked  Mr. 
Laing  if  he  could  draw  up  a  short  summary  of  the  negative 
creed ;  a  body  of  negative  propositions,  which  have  so  far 
been  adopted  on  the  negative  side  as  to  be  what  the  Apostles' 
and  other  accepted  creeds  are  on  the  positive ;  and  Mr.  Laing 
at  once  kindly  obliged  Mr.  Gladstone  with  the  desired  arti- 
cles— eight  of  them. 

If  any  one  had  preferred  this  request  to  me  I  should  have 
replied  that,  if  he  referred  to  agnostics,  they  have  no  creed ; 
and,  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  can  not  have  any.  Agnosti- 
cism, in  fact,  is  not  a  creed,  but  a  method,  the  essence  of 
which  lies  in  the  rigorous  application  of  a  single  principle. 
That  principle  is  of  great  antiquity ;  it  is  as  old  as  Socrates ; 
as  old  as  the  writer  who  said,  "  Try  all  things,  hold  fast  by 
that  which  is  good  " ;  it  is  the  foundation  of  the  Eeforma- 
tion,  which  simply  illustrated  the  axiom  that  every  man 
should  be  able  to  give  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him  ; 
it  is  the  great  principle  of  Descartes ;  it  is  the  fundamental 
axiom  of  modern  science.  Positively  the  principle  may  be 
expressed :  In  matters  of  the  intellect  follow  your  reason  as 

far  as  it  will  take  you  without  regard  to  any  other  considera- 
13 


282  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

tion.  And  negatively:  In  matters  of  the  intellect  do  not 
pretend  that  conclusions  are  certain  which  are  not  demon- 
strated or  demonstrable.  That  I  take  to  be  the  agnostic 
faith,  which  if  a  man  keep  whole  and  undented,  he  shall  not 
be  ashamed  to  look  the  universe  in  the  face,  whatever  the 
future  may  have  in  store  for  him. 

The  results  of  the  working  out  of  the  agnostic  principle 
will  vary  according  to  individual  knowledge  and  capacity, 
and  according  to  the  general  condition  of  science.  That 
which  is  unproved  to-day  may  be  proved  by  the  help  of  new 
discoveries  to-morrow.  The  only  negative  fixed  points  will 
be  those  negations  which  flow  from  the  demonstrable  limita- 
tion of  our  faculties.  And  the  only  obligation  accepted  is  to 
have  the  mind  always  open  to  conviction.  Agnostics  who 
never  fail  in  carrying  out  their  principles  are,  I  am  afraid,  as 
rare  as  other  people  of  whom  the  same  consistency  can  be 
truthfully  predicated.  But,  if  you  were  to  meet  with  such  a 
phoenix  and  to  tell  him  that  you  had  discovered  that  two  and 
two  make  five,  he  would  patiently  ask  you  to  state  your  rea- 
sons for  that  conviction,  and  express  his  readiness  to  agree 
with  you  if  he  found  them  satisfactory.  The  apostolic  in- 
junction to  "  suffer  fools  gladly  "  should  be  the  rule  of  life 
of  a  true  agnostic.  I  am  deeply  conscious  how  far  I  myself 
fall  short  of  this  ideal,  but  it  is  my  personal  conception  of 
what  agnostics  ought  to  be. 

However,  as  I  began  by  stating,  I  speak  only  for  myself ; 
and  I  do  not  dream  of  anathematizing  and  excommunicating 
Mr.  Laing.  But  when  I  consider  his  creed  and  compare  it  with 
the  Athanasian,  I  think  I  have  on  the  whole  a  clearer  con- 
ception of  the  meaning  of  the  latter.  "  Polarity,"  in  Article  ■ 
VIII.,  for  example,  is  a  word  about  which  I  heard  a  good 
deal  in  my  youth,  when  "  Naturphilosophie  "  was  in  fashion, 
and  greatly  did  I  suffer  from  it.  For  many  years  past, 
whenever  I  have  met  with  "  polarity  "  anywhere  but  in  a 
discussion  of.  some  purely  physical  topic,  such  as  magnet- 
ism, I  have  shut  the  book.     Mr.  Laing  must  excuse  me  if  the 


AGNOSTICISM.  283 

force  of  habit  was  too  much  for  me  when  I  read  his  eighth 
article. 

And  now,  what  is  to  be  said  to  Mr.  Harrison's  remarkable 
deliverance  "On  the  future  of  agnosticism"?*  I  would 
that  it  were  not  my  business  to  say  anything,  for  I  am  afraid 
that  I  can  say  nothing  which  shall  manifest  my  great  per- 
sonal respect  for  this  able  writer,  and  for  the  zeal  and  energy 
with  which  he  ever  and  anon  galvanizes  the  weakly  frame  of 
Positivism  until  it  looks  more  than  ever  like  John  Bunyan's 
Pope  and  Pagan  rolled  into  one.  There  is  a  story  often  re- 
peated, and  I  am  afraid  none  the  less  mythical  on  that  ac- 
count, of  a  valiant  and  loud-voiced  corporal  in  command  of 
two  full  privates  who,  falling  in  with  a  regiment  of  the  enemy 
in  the  dark,  orders  it  to  surrender  under  pain  of  instant  an- 
nihilation by  his  force ;  and  the  enemy  surrenders  accord- 
ingly. I  am  always  reminded  of  this  tale  when  I  read  the 
positivist  commands  to  the  forces  of  Christianity  and  of 
Science ;  only  the  enemy  shows  no  more  signs  of  intend- 
ing to  obey  now  than  they  have  done  any  time  these  forty 
years. 

The  allocution  under  consideration  has  the  papal  flavor 
which  is  wont  to  hang  about  the  utterances  of  the  pontiffs  of 
the  Church  of  Comte.  Mr.  Harrison  speaks  with  authority 
and  not  as  one  of  the  common  scribes  of  the  period.  He 
knows  not  only  what  agnosticism  is  and  how  it  has  come 
about,  but  what  will  become  of  it.  The  agnostic  is  to  con- 
tent himself  with  being  the  precursor  of  the  positivist.  In 
his  place,  as  a  sort  of  navvy  leveling  the  ground  and  cleansing 
it  of  such  poor  stuff  as  Christianity,  he  is  a  useful  creature 
who  deserves  patting  on  the  back,  on  condition  that  he  does 
not  venture  beyond  his  last.  But  let  not  these  scientific  San- 
ballats  presume  that  they  are  good  enough  to  take  part  in 
the  building   of   the   Temple — they  are   mere    Samaritans, 

*  Fortnightly  Review.  Jan.,  1889. 


284:  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

doomed  to  die  out  in  proportion  as  the  Eeligion  of  Humanity 
is  accepted  by  mankind.  Well,  if  that  is  their  fate,  they 
have  time  to  be  cheerful.  But  let  us  hear  Mr.  Harrison's 
pronouncement  of  their  doom. 

"  Agnosticism  is  a  stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  an 
entirely  negative  stage,  the  point  reached  by  physicists,  a 
purely  mental  conclusion,  with  no  relation  to  things  social 
at  all "  (p.  154).  I  am  quite  dazed  by  this  declaration.  Are 
there,  then,  any  "  conclusions  "  that  are  not  "  purely  men- 
tal "  ?  Is  there  "  no  relation  to  things  social "  in  "  mental 
conclusions"  which  affect  men's  whole  conception  of  life? 
Was  that  prince  of  agnostics,  David  Hume,  particularly  im- 
bued with  physical  science  ?  Supposing  physical  science  to 
be  non-existent,  would  not  the  agnostic  principle,  applied  by 
the  philologist  and  the  historian,  lead  to  exactly  the  same 
results  ?  Is  the  modern  more  or  less  complete  suspension  of 
judgment  as  to  the  facts  of  the  history  of  regal  Borne,  or  the 
real  origin  of  the  Homeric  poems,  anything  but  agnosticism 
in  history  and  in  literature  ?  And  if  so,  how  can  agnosticism 
be  the  "  mere  negation  of  the  physicist "  ? 

"  Agnosticism  is  a  stage  in  the  evolution  of  religion."  ISTo 
two  people  agree  as  to  what  is  meant  by  the  term  "  religion  " ; 
but  if  it  means,  as  I  think  it  ought  to  mean,  simply  the  rev- 
erence and  love  for  the  ethical  ideal,  and  the  desire  to  realize 
that  ideal  in  life,  which  every  man  ought  to  feel — then  I  say 
agnosticism  has  no  more  to  do  with  it  than  it  has  to  do  with 
music  or  painting.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Harrison,  like 
most  people,  means  by  "  religion  "  theology,  then  in  my  judg- 
ment agnosticism  can  be  said  to  be  a  stage  in  its  evolution, 
only  as  death  may  be  said  to  be  the  final  stage  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  life. 

When  agnostic  logic  is  simply  one  of  the  canons  of  thought, 
agnosticism,  as  a  distinctive  faith,  will  have  spontaneously  dis- 
appeared (p.  155). 

I  can  but  marvel  that  such  sentences  as  this,  and  those 


AGNOSTICISM.  285 

already  quoted,  should  have  proceeded  from  Mr.  Harrison's 
pen.  Does  he  really  mean  to  suggest  that  agnostics  have  a 
logic  peculiar  to  themselves  ?  Will  he  kindly  help  me  out  of 
my  bewilderment  when  I  try  to  think  of  "logic  "  being  any- 
thing else  than  the  canon  (which,  I  believe,  means  rule)  of 
thought?  As  to  agnosticism  being  a  distinctive  faith,  I  have 
already  shown  that  it  can  not  possibly  be  anything  of  the 
kind,  unless  perfect  faith  in  logic  is  distinctive  of  agnostics ; 
which,  after  all,  it  may  be. 

Agnosticism  as  a  religious  philosophy  per  se  rests  on  an 
almost  total  ignoring  of  history  and  social  evolution  (p.  152). 

But  neither  per  se  nor  per  aliud  has  agnosticism  (if  I 
know  anything  about  it)  the  least  pretension  to  be  a  religious 
philosophy ;  so  far  from  resting  on  ignorance  of  history,  and 
that  social  evolution  of  which  history  is  the  account,  it  is  and 
has  been  the  inevitable  result  of  the  strict  adherence  to  sci- 
entific methods  by  historical  investigators.  Our  forefathers 
-were  quite  confident  about  the  existence  of  Eomulus  and 
Eemus,  of  King  Arthur,  and  of  Hengist  and  Horsa.  Most 
of  us  have  become  agnostics  in  regard  to  the  reality  of  these 
worthies.  It  is  a  matter  of  notoriety  of  which  Mr.  Harrison, 
who  accuses  us  all  so  freely  of  ignoring  history,  should  not 
be  ignorant,  that  the  critical  process  which  has  shattered  the 
foundations  of  orthodox  Christian  doctrine  owes  its  origin, 
not  to  the  devotees  of  physical  science,  but,  before  all,  to 
Kichard  Simon,  the  learned  French  Oratorian,  just  two  hun- 
dred years  ago.  I  can  not  find  evidence  that  either  Simon, 
or  any  one  of  the  great  scholars  and  critics  of  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries  wTho  have  continued  Simon's  work, 
had  any  particular  acquaintance  with  physical  science.  I 
have  already  pointed  out  that  Hume  was  independent  of  it. 
And  certainly  one  of  the  most  potent  influences  in  the  same 
direction,  upon  history  in  the  present  century,  that  of  Grote, 
did  not  come  from  the  physical  side.  Physical  science,  in 
fact,  has  had  nothing  directly  to  do  with  the  criticism  of  the 


286  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Gospels ;  it  is  wholly  incompetent  to  furnish  demonstrative 
evidence  that  any  statement  made  in  these  histories  is  un- 
true. Indeed,  modern  physiology  can  find  parallels  in  nature 
for  events  of  apparently  the  most  eminently  supernatural 
kind  recounted  in  some  of  those  histories. 

It  is  a  comfort  to  hear,  upon  Mr.  Harrison's  authority, 
that  the  laws  of  physical  nature  show  no  signs  of  becoming 
"  less  definite,  less  consistent,  or  less  popular  as  time  goes 
on  "  (p.  154).  How  a  law  of  nature  is  to  become  indefinite, 
or  "inconsistent,"  passes  my  poor  powers  of  imagination. 
But  with  universal  suffrage  and  the  coach-dog  theory  of  pre- 
miership in  full  view;  the  theory,  I  mean,  that  the  whole 
duty  of  a  political  chief  is  to  look  sharp  for  the  way  the 
social  coach  is  driving,  and  then  run  in  front  and  bark  loud — 
as  if  being  the  leading  noise-maker  and  guiding  were  the  same 
things — it  is  truly  satisfactory  to  me  to  know  that  the  laws 
of  nature  are  increasing  in  popularity.  Looking  at  recent 
developments  of  the  policy  which  is  said  to  express  the  great 
heart  of  the  people,  I  have  had  my  doubts  of  the  fact ;  and 
my  love  for  my  fellow-countrymen  has  led  me  to  reflect  with 
dread  on  what  will  happen  to  them  if  any  of  the  laws  of  na- 
ture ever  become  so  unpopular  in  their  eyes  as  to  be  voted 
down  by  the  transcendent  authority  of  universal  suffrage.  If 
the  legion  of  demons,  before  they  set  out  on  their  journey  in 
the  swine,  had  had  time  to  hold  a  meeting  and  to  resolve 
unanimously,  "  That  the  law  of  gravitation  is  oppressive  and 
ought  to  be  repealed,"  I  am  afraid  it  would  have  made  no 
sort  of  difference  to  the  result,  when  their  two  thousand  un- 
willing porters  were  once  launched  down  the  steep  slopes  of 
the  fatal  shore  of  Gennesaret. 

The  question  of  the  place  of  religion  as  an  element  of  human 
nature  as  a  force  of  human  society,  its  origin,  analysis,  and 
functions,  has  never  been  considered  at  all  from  an  agnostic 
point  of  view  (p.  152). 

I  doubt  not  that  Mr.  Harrison  knows  vastly  more  about 


AGNOSTICISM.  287 

history  than  I  do ;  in  fact,  he  tells  the  public  that  some  of  my 
friends  and  I  have  had  no  opportunity  of  occupying  our- 
selves with  that  subject.  I  do  not  like  to  contradict  any 
statement  which  Mr.  Harrison  makes  on  his  own  authority  ; 
only,  if  I  may  be  true  to  my  agnostic  principles,  I  humbly  ask 
how  he  has  obtained  assurance  on  this  head.  I  do  not  profess 
to  know  anything  about  the  range  of  Mr.  Harrison's  studies ; 
but  as  he  has  thought  it  fitting  to  start  the  subject,  I  may 
venture  to  point  out  that,  on  evidence  adduced,  it  might  be 
equally  permissible  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  Mr.  Harrison's 
absorbing  labors  as  the  po?itifex  maximus  of  the  positivist 
religion  have  not  allowed  him  to  acquire  that  acquaintance 
with  the  methods  and  results  of  physical  science,  or  with  the 
history  of  philosophy,  or  of  philological  and  historical  criti- 
cism, which  is  essential  to  any  one  who  desires  to  obtain  a 
right  understanding  of  agnosticism.  Incompetence  in  philoso- 
phy, and  in  all  branches  of  science  except  mathematics,  is 
the  well-known  mental  characteristic  of  the  founder  of  posi- 
tivism. Faithfulness  in  disciples  is  an  admirable  quality  in 
itself ;  the  pity  is  that  it  not  unf  requently  leads  to  the  imitation 
of  the  weaknesses  as  well  as  of  the  strength  of  the  master. 
It  is  only  such  overfaithfulness  which  can  account  for  a 
"  strong  mind  really  saturated  with  the  historical  sense  "  (p. 
153)  exhibiting  the  extraordinary  forgetfulness  of  the  histori- 
cal fact  of  the  existence  of  David  Hume  implied  by  the  as- 
sertion that 

it  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  single  known  agnostic  who  has 
given  to  history  anything  like  the  amount  of  thought  and 
study  which  he  brings  to  a  knowledge  of  the  physical  world 
(p.  153). 

Whoso  calls  to  mind  what  I  may  venture  to  term  the 
bright  side  of  Christianity — that  ideal  of  manhood,  with  its 
strength  and  its  patience,  its  justice  and  its  pity  for  human 
frailty,  its  helpfulness  to  the  extremity  of  self-sacrifice,  its 
ethical  purity  and  nobility,  which  apostles  have  pictured,  in 


288  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

which  armies  of  martyrs  have  placed  their  unshakable  faith,  and 
whence  obscure  men  and  women,  like  Catherine  of  Sienna 
and  John  Knox,  have  derived  the  courage  to  rebuke  popes 
and  kings,  is  not  likely  to  underrate  the  importance  of  the 
Christian  faith  as  a  factor  in  human  history,  or  to  doubt 
that  if  that  faith  should  prove  to  be  incompatible  with  our 
knowledge,  or  necessary  want  of  knowledge,  some  other  hy- 
postasis of  men's  hopes,  genuine  enough  and  worthy  enough 
to  replace  it,  will  arise.  But  that  the  incongruous  mixture 
of  bad  science  with  eviscerated  papistry,  out  of  which  Comte 
manufactured  the  positivist  religion,  will  be  the  heir  of  the 
Christian  ages,  I  have  too  much  respect  for  the  humanity  of 
the  future  to  believe.  Charles  the  Second  told  his  brother, 
"  They  will  not  kill  me,  James,  to  make  you  king."  And  if 
critical  science  is  remorselessly  destroying  the  historical 
foundations  of  the  noblest  ideal  of  humanity  which  mankind 
have  yet  worshiped,  it  is  little  likely  to  permit  the  pitiful  reality 
to  climb  into  the  vacant  shrine. 

That  a  man  should  determine  to  devote  himself  to  the 
service  of  humanity — including  intellectual  and  moral  self- 
culture  under  that  name ;  that  this  should  be,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  word,  his  religion — is  not  only  an  intelligible, 
but,  I  think,  a  laudable  resolution.  And  I  am  greatly  dis- 
posed to  believe  that  it  is  the  only  religion  which  will  prove 
itself  to  be  unassailably  acceptable  so  long  as  the  human  race 
endures.  But  when  the  positivist  asks  me  to  worship  "  Hu- 
manity " — that  is  to  say,  to  adore  the  generalized  conception 
of  men  as  they  ever  have  been  and  probably  ever  will  be — 
I  must  reply  that  I  could  just  as  soon  bow  down  and  worship 
the  generalized  conception  of  a  "  wilderness  of  apes."  Surely 
we  are  not  going  back  to  the  days  of  Paganism,  when  indi- 
vidual men  were  deified,  and  the  hard  good  sense  of  a  dying 
Vespasian  could  prompt  the  bitter  jest,  "  Ut  puto  Deus  fio." 
No  divinity  doth  hedge  a  modern  man,  be  he  even  a  sovereign 
ruler.  Nor  is  there  any  one,  except  a  municipal  magistrate, 
who  is  officially  declared  worshipful.     But  if  there  is  no 


AGNOSTICISM.  289 

spark  of  worship-worthy  divinity  in  the  individual  twigs  of  hu- 
manity, whence  comes  that  godlike  splendor  which  the  Moses 
of  Positivism  fondly  imagines  to  pervade  the  whole  bush. 

I  know  no  study  which  is  so  unutterably  saddening  ag 
that  of  the  evolution  of  humanity,  as  it  is  set  forth  in 
the  annals  of  history.  Out  of  the  darkness  of  prehistoric 
ages  man  emerges  with  the  marks  of  his  lowly  origin  strong 
upon  him.  He  is  a  brute,  only  more  intelligent  than  the 
other  brutes,  a  blind  prey  to  impulses,  which  as  often  as  not 
lead  him  to  destruction ;  a  victim  to  endless  illusions,  which 
make  his  mental  existence  a  terror  and  a  burden,  and  fill  his 
physical  life  with  barren  toil  and  battle.  He  attains  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  physical  comfort,  and  develops  a  more  or  less 
workable  theory  of  life,  in  such  favorable  situations  as  the 
plains  of  Mesopotamia  or  of  Egypt,  and  then,  for  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years,  struggles,  with  varying  fortunes,  at- 
tended by  infinite  wickedness,  bloodshed,  and  misery  to 
maintain  himself  at  this  point  against  the  greed  and  the 
ambition  of  his  fellow-men.  He  makes  a  point  of  killing  and 
otherwise  persecuting  all  those  who  first  try  to  get  him  to 
move  on ;  and  when  he  has  moved  on  a  step,  foolishly  con- 
fers post-mortem  deification  on  his  victims.  He  exactly  re- 
peats the  process  with  all  who  want  to  move  a  step  yet  farther. 
And  the  best  men  of  the  best  epochs  are  simply  those  who 
make  the  fewest  blunders  and  commit  the  fewest  sins. 

That  one  should  rejoice  in  the  good  man,  forgive  the  bad 
man,  and  pity  and  help  all  men  to  the  best  of  one's  ability, 
is  surely  indisputable.  It  is  the  glory  of  Judaism  and  of 
Christianity  to  have  proclaimed  this  truth,  through  all  their 
aberrations.  But  the  worship  of  a  God  who  needs  forgive- 
ness and  help,  and  deserves  pity  every  hour  of  his  existence, 
is  no  better  than  that  of  any  other  voluntarily  selected  fetich. 
The  Emperor  Julian's  project  was  hopeful  in  comparison 
with  the  prospects  of  the  new  Anthropolatry. 

When  the  historian  of  religion  in  the  twentieth  century 


290  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

is  writing  about  the  nineteenth,  I  foresee  he  will  say  some- 
thing of  this  kind : 

The  most  curious  and  instructive  events  in  the  religious 
history  of  the  preceding  century  are  the  rise  and  progress  of 
two  new  sects  called  Mormons  and  Positivists.  To  the  stu- 
dent who  has  carefully  considered  these  remarkable  phenom- 
ena nothing  in  the  records  of  religious  self-delusion  can 
appear  improbable. 

The  Mormons  arose  in  the  midst  of  the  great  Eepublic, 
which,  though  comparatively  insignificant,  at  that  time,  in 
territory  as  in  the  number  of  its  citizens,  was  (as  we  know 
from  the  fragments  of  the  speeches  of  its  orators  which  have 
come  down  to  us)  no  less  remarkable  for  the  native  intelli- 
gence of  its  population  than  for  the  wide  extent  of  their  in- 
formation, owing  to  the  activity  of  their  publishers  in  diffus- 
ing all  that  they  could  invent,  beg,  borrow,  or  steal.  Nor 
were  they  less  noted  for  their  perfect  freedom  from  all  re- 
straints in  thought,  or  speech,  or  deed ;  except,  to  be  sure, 
the  beneficent  and  wise  influence  of  the  majority,  exerted, 
in  case  of  need,  through  an  institution  known  as  "  tar- 
ring and  feathering,"  the  exact  nature  of  which  is  now  dis- 
puted. 

There  is  a  complete  consensus  of  testimony  that  the 
founder  of  Mormonism,  one  Joseph  Smith,  was  a  low-minded, 
ignorant  scamp,  and  that  he  stole  the  "  Scriptures "  which 
he  propounded ;  not  being  clever  enough  to  forge  even  such 
contemptible  stuff  as  they  contain.  Nevertheless  he  must 
have  been  a  man  of  some  force  of  character,  for  a  consider- 
able number  of  disciples  soon  gathered  about  him.  In  spite 
of  repeated  outbursts  of  popular  hatred  and  violence — during 
one  of  which  persecutions  Smith  was  brutally  murdered — the 
Mormon  body  steadily  increased,  and  became  a  flourishing 
community.  But  the  Mormon  practices  being  objectionable 
to  the  majority,  they  were,  more  than  once,  without  any  pre- 
tense of  law,  but  by  force  of  riot,  arson,  and  murder,  driven 
away  from  the  land  they  had  occupied.     Harried  by  these 


AGNOSTICISM.  291 

persecutions,  the  Mormon  body  eventually  committed  itself 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  a  desert  as  barren  as  that  of  Sinai ; 
and  after  terrible  sufferings  and  privations,  reached  the  Oasis 
of  Utah.  Here  it  grew  and  flourished,  sending  out  mission- 
aries to,  and  receiving  converts  from,  all  parts  of  Europe, 
sometimes  to  the  number  of  10,000  in  a  year;  until  in  1880 
the  rich  and  flourishing  community  numbered  110,000  souls 
in  Utah  alone,  while  there  were  probably  30,000  or  40,000 
scattered  abroad  elsewhere.  In  the  whole  history  of  religions 
there  is  no  more  remarkable  example  of  the  power  of  faith  ; 
and,  in  this  case,  the  founder  of  that  faith  was  indubitably  a 
most  despicable  creature.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  that 
the  course  taken  by  the  great  Kepublic  and  its  citizens  runs 
exactly  parallel  with  that  taken  by  the  Eoman  Empire  and 
its  citizens  toward  the  early  Christians,  except  that  the  Eo- 
mans  had  a  certain  legal  excuse  for  their  acts  of  violence, 
inasmuch  as  the  Christian  "  sodalitia  "  were  not  licensed,  and 
consequently  were,  ipso  facto,  illegal  assemblages.  Until,  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  United  States 
legislature  decreed  the  illegality  of  polygamy,  the  Mormons 
were  wholly  within  the  law. 

Nothing  can  present  a  greater  contrast  to  all  this  than 
the  history  of  the  Positivists.  This  sect  arose  much  about 
the  same  time  as  that  of  the  Mormons,  in  the  upper  and 
most  instructed  stratum  of  the  quick-witted,  skeptical  popu- 
lation of  Paris.  The  founder,  Auguste  Comte,  was  a  teacher 
of  mathematics,  but  of  no  eminence  in  that  department  of 
knowledge,  and  with  nothing  but  an  amateur's  acquaintance 
with  physical,  chemical,  and  biological  science.  His  works 
are  repulsive  on  account  of  the  dull  diffuseness  of  their  style, 
and  a  certain  air,  as  of  a  superior  person,  which  characterizes 
them ;  but  nevertheless  they  contain  good  things  here  and 
there.  It  would  take  too  much  space  to  reproduce  in  detail 
a  system  which  proposes  to  regulate  all  human  life  by  the 
promulgation  of  a  Gentile  Leviticus.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that 
M.  Comte  may  be  described  as  a  syncretic,  who,  like  the 


292  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Gnostics  of  early  Church  history,  attempted  to  combine  the 
substance  of  imperfectly  comprehended  contemporary  science 
with  the  form  of  Eoman  Christianity.  It  may  be  that  this 
is  the  reason  why  his  disciples  were  so  very  angry  with  some 
obscure  people  called  Agnostics,  whose  views,  if  we  may  judge 
by  the  account  left  in  the  works  of  a  great  Positivist  contro- 
versial writer,  were  very  absurd. 

To  put  the  matter  briefly,  M.  Comte,  finding  Christianity 
and  Science  at  daggers  drawn,  seems  to  have  said  to  Science, 
"  You  find  Christianity  rotten  at  the  core,  do  you  ?  Well,  I 
will  scoop  out  the  inside  of  it.  And  to  Eomanism :  "  You 
find  Science  mere  dry  light — cold  and  bare.  Well,  I  will  put 
your  shell  over  it,  and  so,  as  schoolboys  make  a  specter  out  of 
a  turnip  and  a  tallow  candle,  behold  the  new  religion  of  Hu- 
manity complete  ! " 

Unfortunately  neither  the  Eomanists  nor  the  people  who 
were  something  more  than  amateurs  in  science,  could  be  got 
to  worship  M.  Comte's  new  idol  properly.  In  the  native 
country  of  Positivism,  one  distinguished  man  of  letters  and 
one  of  science,  for  a  time,  helped  to  make  up  a  roomful  of 
the  faithful,  but  their  love  soon  grew  cold.  In  England,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  appears  to  be  little  doubt  that,  in  the 
ninth  decade  of  the  century,  the  multitude  of  disciples  reached 
the  grand  total  of  several  score.  They  had  the  advantage  of 
the  advocacy  of  one  or  two  most  eloquent  and  learned  apos- 
tles, and,  at  any  rate,  the  sympathy  of  several  persons  of 
light  and  leading — and,  if  they  were  not  seen,  they  were 
heard  all  over  the  world.  On  the  other  hand,  as  a  sect, 
they  labored  under  the  prodigious  disadvantage  of  being 
refined,  estimable  people,  living  in  the  midst  of  the  worn- 
out  civilization  of  the  old  world ;  where  any  one  who  had 
tried  to  persecute  them,  as  the  Mormons  were  persecuted, 
would  have  been  instantly  hanged.  But  the  majority  never 
dreamed  of  persecuting  them ;  on  the  contrary,  they  were 
rather  given  to,  scold  and  otherwise  try  the  patience  of  the 
majority. 


AGNOSTICISM.  293 

The  history  of  these  sects  in  the  closing  years  of  the 
century  is  highly  instructive.     Mormonism  .... 

But  I  find  I  have  suddenly  slipped  off  Mr.  Harrison's 
tripod,  which  I  had  borrowed  for  the  occasion.  The  fact  is, 
I  am  not  equal  to  the  prophetical  business,  and  ought  not  to 
have  undertaken  it. 


X. 

THE  VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS. 

Charles,  or,  more  properly,  Karl,  King  of  the  Franks, 
consecrated  Roman  Emperor  in  St.  Peter's  on  Christmas 
Day,  A.  D.  800,  and  known  to  posterity  as  the  Great  (chiefly 
by  his  agglutinative  Gallicized  denomination  of  Charle- 
magne), was  a  man  great  in  all  ways,  physically  and  men- 
tally. Within  a  couple  of  centuries  after  his  death  Charle- 
magne became  the  center  of  innumerable  legends ;  and  the 
myth-making  process  does  not  seem  to  have  been  sensibly 
interfered  with  by  the  existence  of  sober  and  truthful  his- 
tories of  the  Emperor  and  of  the  times  which  immediately 
preceded  and  followed  his  reign,  by  a  contemporary  writer 
who  occupied  a  high  and  confidential  position  in  his  court, 
and  in  that  of  his  successor.  This  was  one  Eginhard,  or 
Einhard,  who  appears  to  have  been  born  about  A.  D.  770,  and 
spent  his  youth  at  the  court,  being  educated  along  with 
Charles's  sons.  There  is  excellent  contemporary  testimony 
not  only  to  Eginhard's  existence,  but  to  his  abilities,  and  to 
the  place  which  he  occupied  in  the  circle  of  the  intimate 
friends  of  the  great  ruler  whose  life  he  subsequently  wrote. 
In  fact,  there  is  as  good  evidence  of  Eginhard's  existence, 
of  his  official  position,  and  of  his  being  the  author  of  the 
chief  works  attributed  to  him,  as  can  reasonably  be  expected 
in  the  case  of  a  man  who  lived  more  than  a  thousand  years 
ago,  and  was  neither  a  great  king  nor  a  great  warrior.  The 
works  are — 1.  Tfie  Life  of  the  Emperor  Karl.  2.  The  An- 
nals of  the  Franhs.     3.  Letters.     4.  The  History  of  the 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       295 

Translation  of  tlie  Blessed  Martyrs  of  Christ,   SS.  Mar- 
cellinus  and  Petrus. 

It  is  to  the  last,  as  one  of  the  most  singular  and  interest- 
ing records  of  the  period  during  which  the  Roman  world 
passed  into  that  of  the  Middle  Ages,  that  I  wish  to  direct 
attention.*  It  was  written  in  the  ninth  century,  somewhere, 
apparently,  about  the  year  830,  when  Eginhard,  ailing  in 
health  and  weary  of  political  life,  had  withdrawn  to  the 
monastery  of  Seligenstadt,  of  which  he  was  the  founder.  A 
manuscript  copy  of  the  work,  made  in  the  tenth  century,  and 
once  the  property  of  the  monastery  of  St.  Bavon  on  the 
Scheldt,  of  which  Eginhard  was  Abbot,  is  still  extant,  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that,  in  this  copy,  the  original 
has  been  in  any  way  interpolated  or  otherwise  tampered 
with.  The  main  features  of  the  strange  story  contained  in 
the  Historia  Translations  are  set  forth  in  the  following 
pages,  in  which,  in  regard  to  all  matters  of  importance,  I 
shall  adhere  as  closely  as  possible  to  Eginhard's  own  words. 

While  I  was  still  at  Court,  busied  with  secular  affairs,  I 
often  thought  of  the  leisure  which  I  hoped  one  day  to  enjoy  in 
a  solitary  place,  far  away  from  the  crowd,  with  which  the  liber- 
ality of  Prince  Louis,  whom  I  then  served,  had  provided  me. 
This  place  is  situated  in  that  part  of  Germany  which  lies  be- 
tween the  Neckar  and  the  Maine,  t  and  is  nowadays  called  the 
Odenwald  by  those  who  live  in  and  about  it.  And  here  having 
built,  according  to  my  capacity  and  resources,  not  only  houses 
and  permanent  dwellings,  but  also  a  basilica  fitted  for  the  per- 
formance of  divine  service  and  of  no  mean  style  of  construction, 
I  began  to  think  to  what  saint  or  martyr  I  could  best  dedicate 
it.  A  good  deal  of  time  had  passed  while  my  thoughts  fluctu- 
ated about  this  matter,  when  it  happened  that  a  certain  deacon 

*  My  citations  are  made  from  Teulet's  Einhardi  omnia  quce  extant 
opera,  Paris,  1840-1843,  which  contains  a  biography  of  the  author,  a 
history  of  the  text,  with  translations  into  French,  and  many  valuable 
annotations. 

f  At  present  included  in  the  Duchies  of  Hesse  -  Darmstadt  and 
Baden. 


296  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  the  Roman  Church,  named  Deusdona,  arrived  at  the  Court 
for  the  purpose  of  seeking  the  favor  of  the  King  in  some  affairs 
in  which  he  was  interested.  He  remained  some  time;  and 
then,  having  transacted  his  business,  he  was  about  to  return  to 
Rome,  when  one  day,  moved  by  courtesy  to  a  stranger,  we 
invited  him  to  a  modest  refection ;  and  while  talking  of  many 
things  at  table,  mention  was  made  of  the  translation  of  the  body 
of  the  blessed  Sebastian,*  and  of  the  neglected  tombs  of  the 
martyrs,  of  which  there  is  such  a  prodigious  number  at  Rome; 
and  the  conversation  having  turned  toward  the  dedication  of 
our  new  basilica,  I  began  to  inquire  how  it  might  be  possible  for 
me  to  obtain  some  of  the  true  relics  of  the  saints  which  rest  at 
Rome.  He  at  first  hesitated,  and  declared  that  he  did  not  know 
how  that  could  be  done.  But  observing  that  I  was  both  anxious 
and  curious  about  the  subject,  he  promised  to  give  me  an  answer 
some  other  day. 

When  I  returned  to  the  question  some  time  afterward,  he 
immediately  drew  from  his  bosom  a  paper,  which  he  begged  me 
to  read  when  I  was  alone,  and  to  tell  him  what  I  was  disposed 
to  think  of  that  which  was  therein  stated.  I  took  the  paper 
and,  as  he  desired,  read  it  alone  and  in  secret.     (Cap.  i.  2,  3). 

I  shall  have  occasion  to  return  to  Deacon  Deusdona's  con- 
ditions, and  to  what  happened  after  Eginhard's  acceptance 
of  them.  Suffice  it,  for  the  present,  to  say  that  Eginhard's 
notary,  Ratleicus  (Ratleig)  was  dispatched  to  Rome  and  suc- 
ceeded in  securing  two  bodies,  supposed  to  be  those  of  the 
holy  martyrs  Marcellinus  and.  Petrus ;  and  when  he  had  got 
as  far  on  his  homeward  journey  as  the  Burgundian  town  of 
Solothurn,  or  Soleure,f  notary  Ratleig  dispatched  to  his  mas- 
ter, at  St.  Bavon,  a  letter  announcing  the  success  of  his 
mission. 

As  soon  as  by  reading  it  I  was  assured  of  the  arrival  of  the 
saints,  I  dispatched  a  confidential  messenger  to  Maestricht  to 
gather  together  priests,  other  clerics,  and  also  laymen,  to  go  out 

*  This  took  place  in  the  year  826  a.d.     The  relics  were  brought 
from  Rome  and  deposited  in  the  Church  of  St.  Medardus  at  Soissons. 
f  Now  included  in  Western  Switzerland. 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       207 

to  meet  the  coming1  saints  as  speedily  as  possible.  And  he  and 
his  companions,  having  lost  no  time,  after  a  few  days  met  those 
who  had  charge  of  the  saints  at  Solothurn.  Joined  with  them, 
and  with  a  vast  crowd  of  people  who  gathered  from  all  parts, 
singing  hymns,  and  amid  great  and  universal  rejoicings,  they 
traveled  quickly  to  the  city  of  Argentoratum,  which  is  now 
called  Strasburg.  Thence  embarking  on  the  Rhine,  they  came 
to  the  place  called  Portus,*  and  landing  on  the  east  bank  of  the 
river,  at  the  fifth  station  thence  they  arrived  at  Michilinstadt,t 
accompanied  by  an  immense  multitude,  praising  God.  This 
place  is  in  that  forest  of  Germany  which  in  modern  times  is 
called  the  Odenwald,  and  about  six  leagues  from  the  Maine. 
And  here,  having  found  a  basilica  recently  built  by  me,  but  not 
yet  consecrated,  they  carried  the  sacred  remains  into  it  and  de- 
posited them  therein,  as  if  it  were  to  be  their  final  resting-place. 
As  soon  as  all  this  was  reported  to  me  I  traveled  thither  as 
quickly  as  I  could.     (Cap.  ii.  14). 

Three  days  after  Eginhard's  arrival  began  the  series  of 
wonderful  events  which  he  narrates,  and  for  which  we  have 
his  personal  guarantee.  The  first  thing  that  he  notices  is 
the  dream  of  a  servant  of  Eatleig,  the  notary,  who,  being  set 
to  watch  the  holy  relics  in  the  church  after  vespers,  went  to 
sleep,  and  during  his  slumbers  had  a  vision  of  two  pigeons, 
one  white  and  one  gray  and  white,  which  came  and  sat  upon 
the  bier  over  the  relics  ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  a  voice  or- 
dered the  man  to  tell  his  master  that  the  holy  martyrs  had 
chosen  another  resting-place  and  desired  to  be  transported 
thither  without  delay. 

Unfortunately,  the  saints  seem  to  have  forgotten  to  men- 
tion where  they  wished  to  go ;  and,  with  the  most  anxious 
desire  to  gratify  their  smallest  wishes,  Eginhard  was  natu- 
rally greatly  perplexed  what  to  do.  While  in  this  state  of 
mind,  he  was  one  day  contemplating  his  "  great  and  wonder- 
ful treasure,  more  precious  than  all  the  gold  in  the  world," 

*  Probably,  according  to  Teulet,  the  present  Sandhofer-fahrt,  a 
little  below  the  embouchure  of  the  Neckar. 

f  The  present  Michilstadt,  thirty  miles  N.E.  of  Heidelberg. 


298  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

when  it  struck  him  that  the  chest  in  which  the  relics  were 
contained  was  quite  unworthy  of  its  contents ;  and  after  ves- 
pers he  gave  orders  to  one  of  the  sacristans  to  take  the  meas- 
ure of  the  chest  in  order  that  a  more  fitting  shrine  might  be 
constructed.  The  man,  having  lighted  a  wax  candle  and 
raised  the  pall  which  covered  the  relics,  in  order  to  carry  out 
his  master's  orders,  was  astonished  and  terrified  to  observe 
that  the  chest  was  covered  with  a  blood-like  exudation  (lo- 
culum  mirum  in  modum  humore  sanguiheo  undique  distil- 
lantern),  and  at  once  sent  a  message  to  Eginhard. 

Then  I  and  those  priests  who  accompanied  me  beheld  this 
stupendous  miracle,  worthy  of  all  admiration.  For  just  as 
when  it  is  going  to  rain,  pillars  and  slabs  and  marble  images 
exude  moisture,  and,  as  it  were  sweat,  so  the  chest  which  con- 
tained the  most  sacred  relics  was  found  moist  with  the  blood 
exuding  on  all  sides.     (Cap.  ii.  16.) 

Three  days'  fast  was  ordained  in  order  that  the  meaning 
of  the  portent  might  be  ascertained.  All  that  happened, 
however,  was  that  at  the  end  of  that  time  the  "  blood,"  which 
had  been  exuding  in  drops  all  the  while,  dried  up.  Eginhard 
is  careful  to  say  that  the  liquid  "  had  a  saline  taste,  something 
like  that  of  tears,  and  was  thin  as  water,  though  of  the  color 
of  true  blood,"  and  he  clearly  thinks  this  satisfactory  evi- 
dence that  it  was  blood. 

The  same  night  another  servant  had  a  vision,  in  which 
still  more  imperative  orders  for  the  removal  of  the  relics  were 
given ;  and,  from  that  time  forth,  "  not  a  single  night  passed 
without  one,  two,  or  even  three  of  our  companions  receiving 
revelations  in  dreams  that  the  bodies  of  the  saints  were  to  be 
transferred  from  that  place  to  another."  At  last  a  priest, 
Hildfrid,  saw,  in  a  dream,  a  venerable  white-haired  man  in  a 
priest's  vestments,  who  bitterly  reproached  Eginhard  for  not 
obeying  the  repeated  orders  of  the  saints,  and  upon  this  the 
journey  was  commenced.  Why  Eginhard  delayed  obedience 
to  these  repeated  visions  so  long  does  not  appear.     He  does 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       299 

not  say  so  in  so  many  words,  but  the  general  tenor  of  the  nar- 
rative leads  one  to  suppose  that  Mulinheim  (afterward  Selig- 
enstadt)  is  the  "  solitary  place "  in  which  he  had  built  the 
church  which  awaited  dedication.  In  that  case,  all  the  peo- 
ple about  him  would  know  that  he  desired  that  the  saints 
should  go  there.  If  a  glimmering  of  secular  sense  led  him 
to  be  a  little  suspicious  about  the  real  cause  of  the  unanimity 
of  the  visionary  beings  who  manifested  themselves  to  his 
entourage  in  favor  of  moving  on,  he  does  not  say  so. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  day's  journey  the  precious  relics 
were  deposited  in  the  church  of  St.  Martin,  in  the  village  of 
Ostheim.  Hither  a  paralytic  nun  (sanctimonialis  qucedam 
paralytica)  of  the  name  of  Euodlang  was  brought  in  a  car 
by  her  friends  and  relatives  from  a  monastery  a  league  off. 
She  spent  the  night  watching  and  praying  by  the  bier  of  the 
saints ;  "  and  health  returning  to  all  her  members,  on  the 
morrow  she  went  back  to  her  place  whence  she  came,  on  her 
feet,  nobody  supporting  her,  or  in  any  way  giving  her  assist- 
ance."    (Cap.  ii.  19.) 

On  the  second  day,  the  relics  were  carried  to  Upper  Mu- 
linheim, and  finally,  in  accordance  with  the  orders  of  the 
martyrs,  deposited  in  the  church  of  that  place,  which  was 
therefore  renamed  Seligenstadt.  Here,  Daniel,  a  beggar  boy 
of  fifteen,  and  so  bent  that  "  he  could  not  look  at  the  sky 
without  lying  on  his  back,"  collapsed  and  fell  down  during 
the  celebration  of  the  Mass.  "  Thus  he  lay  a  long  time,  as  if 
asleep,  and  all  his  limbs  straightening  and  his  flesh  strengthen- 
ing (recepta  firmitate  nervorum),  he  arose  before  our  eyes, 
quite  well."     (Cap.  ii.  20). 

Some  time  afterward  an  old  man  entered  the  church  on  his 
hands  and  knees,  being  unable  to  use  his  limbs  properly : — 

He,  in  presence  of  all  of  us,  by  the  power  of  God  and  the 
merits  of  the  blessed  martyrs,  in  the  same  hour  in  which  he  en- 
tered was  so  perfectly  cured  that  he  walk  without  so  much  as  a 
stick.  And  he  said  that,  though  he  had  been  deaf  for  five  years, 
his  deafness  had  ceased  along  with  the  palsy.     (Cap.  iii.  33). 


300  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Eginhard  was  now  obliged  to  return  to  the  Court  at  Aix- 
la-Chapelle,  where  his  duties  kept  him  through  the  winter ; 
and  he  is  careful  to  point  out  that  the  later  miracles  which 
he  proceeds  to  speak  of  are  known  to  him  only  at  second- 
hand. But,  as  he  naturally  observes,  having  seen  such 
wonderful  events  with  his  own  eyes,  why  should  he  doubt 
similar  narrations  when  they  are  received  from  trustworthy 
sources  ? 

Wonderful  stories  these  are  indeed,  but  as  they  are,  for 
the  most  part,  of  the  same  general  character  as  those  already 
recounted,  they  may  be  passed  over.  There  is,  however,  an 
account  of  a  possessed  maiden  which  is  worth  attention.  This 
is  set  forth  in  a  memoir,  the  principal  contents  of  which  are 
the  speeches  of  a  demon  who  declared  himself  to  possess  the 
singular  appellation  of  "  Wiggo,"  and  revealed  himself  in  the 
presence  of  many  witnesses,  before  the  altar,  close  to  the  relics 
of  the  blessed  martyrs.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  revelations 
appear  to  have  been  made  in  the  shape  of  replies  to  the  ques- 
tions of  the  exorcising  priest,  and  there  is  no  means  of  judg- 
ing how  far  the  answers  are,  really,  only  the  questions  to 
which  the  patient  replied  yes  or  no. 

The  possessed  girl,  about  sixteen  years  of  age,  was  brought 
by  her  parents  to  the  basilica  of  the  martyrs. 

When  she  approached  the  tomb  containing  the  sacred  bodies, 
the  priest,  according  to  custom,  read  the  formula  of  exorcism 
over  her  head.  When  he  began  to  ask  how  and  when  the  de- 
mon had  entered  her,  she  answered,  not  in  the  tongue  of  the 
barbarians,  which  alone  the  girl  knew,  but  in  the  Eoman  tongue. 
And  when  the  priest  was  astonished  and  asked  how  she  came 
to  know  Latin,  when  her  parents,  who  stood  by,  were  wholly 
ignorant  of  it,  "  Thou  has  never  seen  my  parents,"  was  the  re- 
ply. To  this  the  priest,  "  Whence  art  thou,  then,  if  these  are 
not  thy  parents  ?  "  And  the  demon,  by  the  mouth  of  the  girl, 
"  I  am  a  follower  and  disciple  of  Satan,  and  for  a  long  time  I 
was  gatekeeper  (janitor)  in  hell;  but,  for  some  years,  along 
with  eleven  companions,  I  have  ravaged  the  kingdom  of  the 
Franks."    (Cap.  v.  49). 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       301 

He  then  goes  on  to  tell  how  they  blasted  the  crops  and  scat- 
tered pestilence  among  beasts  and  men,  because  of  the  preva- 
lent wickedness  of  the  people.* 

The  enumeration  of  all  these  iniquities,  in  oratorical  style, 
takes  up  a  whole  octavo  page ;  and  at  the  end  it  is  stated, 
u  All  these  things  the  demon  spoke  in  Latin  by  the  mouth 
of  the  girl." 

And  when  the  priest  imperatively  ordered  him  to  come  out, 
"  I  shall  go,"  said  he,  "  not  in  obedience  to  you,  but  on  account 
of  the  power  of  the  saints,  who  do  not  allow  me  to  remain  any 
longer."  And,  having  said  this,  he  threw  the  girl  down  on  the 
floor  and  there  compelled  her  to  lie  prostrate  for  a  time,  as 
though  she  slumbered.  After  a  little  while,  however,  he  going 
away,  the  girl,  by  the  power  of  Christ  and  the  merits  of  the 
blessed  martyrs,  as  it  were  awaking  from  sleep,  rose  up  quite 
well,  to  the  astonishment  of  all  present;  nor  after  the  demon 
had  gone  out  was  she  able  to  speak  Latin :  so  that  it  was  plain 
enough  that  it  was  not  she  who  had  spoken  in  that  tongue,  but 
the  demon  by  her  mouth.     (Cap.  v.  51). 

If  the  Historia  Translations  contained  nothing  more 
than  has  been,  at  present,  laid  before  the  reader,  disbelief  in 
the  miracles  of  which  it  gives  so  precise  and  full  a  record 
might  well  be  regarded  as  hyper-skepticism.  It  might  fairly 
be  said,  Here  you  have  a  man,  whose  high  character,  acute 
intelligence,  and  large  instruction  are  certified  by  eminent 
contemporaries ;  a  man  who  stood  high  in  the  confidence  of 
one  of  the  greatest  rulers  of  any  age,  and  whose  other  works 
prove  him  to  be  an  accurate  and  judicious  narrator  of  ordi- 
nary events.  This  man  tells  you,  in  language  which  bears  the 
stamp  of  sincerity,  of  things  which  happened  within  his 
own  knowledge,  or  within  that  of  persons  in  whose  veracity 
he  has  entire  confidence,  while  he  appeals  to  his  sovereign 
and  the  court  as  witnesses  of  others ;  what  possible  ground 
can  there  be  for  disbelieving  him  ? 

*  In  the  Middle  Ages  one  of  the  most  favorite  accusations  against 
witches  was  that  they  committed  just  these  enormities. 


302  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Well,  it  is  hard  upon  Eginhard  to  say  so,  but  it  is  exactly 
the  honesty  and  sincerity  of  the  man  which  are  his  undoing 
as  a  witness  to  the  miraculous.  He  himself  makes  it  quite 
obvious  that  when  his  profound  piety  comes  on  the  stage,  his 
good  sense  and  even  his  perception  of  right  and  wrong 
make  their  exit.  Let  us  go  back  to  the  point  at  which  we 
left  him,  secretly  perusing  the  letter  of  Deacon  Deusdona. 
As  he  tells  us,  its  contents  were 

that  he  [the  deacon]  had  many  relics  of  saints  at  home,  and 
that  he  would  give  them  to  me  if  I  would  furnish  him  with  the 
means  of  returning  to  Rome ;  he  had  observed  that  I  had  two 
mules,  and  if  I  would  let  him  have  one  of  them  and  would 
dispatch  with  him  a  confidential  servant  to  take  charge  of  the 
relics,  he  would  at  once  send  them  to  me.  This  plausibly  ex- 
pressed proposition  pleased  me,  and  I  made  up  my  mind  to  test 
the  value  of  the  somewhat  ambiguous  promise  at  once ;  *  so 
giving  him  the  mule  and  money  for  his  journey  I  ordered  my 
notary  Katleig  (who  already  desired  to  go  to  Rome  to  offer  his 
devotions  there)  to  go  with  him.  Therefore,  having  left  Aix- 
la-Chapelle  (where  the  Emperor  and  his  Court  resided  at  the 
time)  they  came  to  Soissons.  Here  they  spoke  with  Hildoin, 
abbot  of  the  monastery  of  St  Medardus,  because  the  said  deacon 
had  assured  him  that  he  had  the  means  of  placing  in  his  pos- 
session the  body  of  the  blessed  Tiburtius  the  Martyr.  Attracted 
by  which  promises  he  (Hildoin)  sent  with  them  a  certain  priest, 
Hunus  by  name,  a  sharp  man  (hominem  callidum),  whom  he 
ordered  to  receive  and  bring  back  the  body  of  the  martyr  in 
question.  And  so,  resuming  their  journey,  they  proceeded  to 
Rome  as  fast  as  they  could.     (Cap.  i.  3.) 

Unfortunately,  a  servant  of  the  notary,  one  Reginbald,  fell 
ill  of  a  tertian  fever,  and  impeded  the  progress  of  the  party. 
However,  this  piece  of  adversity  had  its  sweet  uses ;  for  three 
days  before  they  reached  Rome,  Reginbald  had   a  vision. 

*  It  is  pretty  clear  that  Eginhard  had  his  doubts  about  the  deacon, 
whose  pledges  be  qualifies  as  sponsiones  incertce.  But,  to  be  sure,  he 
wrote  after  events  which  fully  justified  skepticism. 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       303 

Somebody  habited  as  a  deacon  appeared  to  him  and  asked 
why  his  master  was  in  such  a  hurry  to  get  to  Rome ;  and 
when  Eeginbald  explained  their  business,  this  visionary  dea- 
con, who  seems  to  have  taken  the  measure  of  his  brother  in 
the  flesh  with  some  accuracy,  told  him  not  by  any  means  to 
expect  that  Deusdona  would  fulfill  his  promises.  Moreover, 
taking  the  servant  by  the  hand,  he  led  him  to  the  top  of  a 
high  mountain,  and  showing  him  Rome  (where  the  man  had 
never  been),  pointed  out  a  church,  adding  "Tell  Ratleig  the 
thing  he  wants  is  hidden  there ;  let  him  get  it  as  quickly  as 
he  can  and  go  back  to  his  master ; "  and,  by  way  of  a  sign 
that  the  order  was  authoriative,  the  servant  was  promised 
that  from  that  time  forth  his  fever  should  disappear.  And 
as  the  fever  did  vanish  to  return  no  more,  the  faith  of  Egin- 
hard's  people  in  Deacon  Deusdona  naturally  vanished  with 
it  (et  fidem  diaconi  promissis  non  halerent).  Nevertheless, 
they  put  up  at  the  deacon's  house  near  St.  Peter  ad  Vincula. 
But  time  went  on  and  no  relics  made  their  appearance,  while 
the  notary  and  the  priest  were  put  off  with  all  sorts  of  ex- 
cuses— the  brother  to  whom  the  relics  had  been  confided 
was  gone  to  Beneventum  and  not  expected  back  for  some 
time,  and  so  on — until  Ratleig  and  Hunus  began  to  despair, 
and  were  minded  to  return,  infecto  negotio. 

But  my  notary,  calling  to  mind  his  servant's  dream,  pro- 
posed to  his  companion  that  they  should  go  to  the  cemetery 
which  their  host  had  talked  about  without  him.  So,  having 
found  and  hired  a  guide,  they  went  in  the  first  place  to  the 
basilica  of  the  blessed  Tiburtius  in  the  Via  Labicana,  about 
three  thousand  paces  from  the  town,  and  cautiously  and  care- 
fully inspected  the  tomb  of  that  martyr,  in  order  to  discover 
whether  it  could  be  opened  without  any  one  being  the  wiser. 
Then  they  descended  into  the  adjoining  crypt,  in  which  the 
bodies  of  the  blessed  martyrs  of  Christ,  Marcellinus,  and  Petrus 
were  buried ;  and,  having  made  out  the  nature  of  their  tomb, 
they  went  away  thinking  their  host  would  not  know  what  they 
had  been  about.  But  things  fell  out  differently  from  what 
they  had  imagined.     (Cap.  i.  7.) 


304  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

In  fact,  Deacon  Deusdona,  who  doubtless  kept  an  eye  on  his 
guests,  knew  all  about  their  manoeuvres  and  made  haste  to  offer 
his  services,  in  order  that  "  with  the  help  of  God  "  (si  Deus 
votis  eorum  favere  dignaretur),  they  should  all  work  together. 
The  deacon  was  evidently  alarmed  lest  they  should  succeed 
without  his  help. 

So,  by  way  of  preparation  for  the  contemplated  vol  avec 
effraction  they  fasted  three  days ;  and  then,  at  night,  with- 
out being  seen,  they  betook  themselves  to  the  basilica  of  St. 
Tiburtius,  and  tried  to  break  open  the  altar  erected  over  his 
remains.  But  the  marble  proving  too  solid,  they  descended 
to  the  crypt,  and  "  having  evoked  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and 
adored  the  holy  martyrs,"  they  proceeded  to  prise  off  the 
stone  which  covered  the  tomb,  and  thereby  exposed  the  body 
of  the  most  sacred  martyr  Marcellinus,  "  whose  head  rested 
on  a  marble  tablet  on  which  his  name  was  inscribed."  The 
body  was  taken  up  with  the  greatest  veneration,  wrapped  in 
a  rich  covering,  and  given  over  to  the  keeping  of  the  deacon 
and  his  brother,  Lunison,  while  the  stone  was  replaced  with 
such  care  that  no  sign  of  the  theft  remained. 

As  sacrilegious  proceedings  of  this  kind  were  punishable 
with  death  by  the  Eoman  law,  it  seems  not  unnatural  that 
Deacon  Deusdona  should  have  become  uneasy,  and  have 
urged  Ratleig  to  be  satisfied  with  what  he  had  got  and  be  off 
with  his  spoils.  But  the  notary  having  thus  cleverly  capt- 
ured the  blessed  Marcellinus,  thought  it  a  pity  he  should  be 
parted  from  the  blessed  Petrus,  side  by  side  with  whom  he 
had  rested  for  five  hundred  years  and  more  in  the  same 
sepulchre  (as  Eginhard  pathetically  observes) ;  and  the 
pious  man  could  neither  eat,  drink,  nor  sleep,  until  he  had- 
compassed  his  desire  to  re-unite  the  saintly  colleagues.  This 
time,  apparently  in  consequence  of  Deusdona's  opposition  to 
any  further  resurrectionist  doings,  he  took  counsel  with  a 
Greek  monk,  one  Basil,  and,  accompanied  by  Hunus,  but 
saying  nothing  to  Deusdona,  they  committed  another  sac- 
rilegious burglary,  securing  this  time,  not  only  the  body  of 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       305 

the  blessed  Petrus,  but  a  quantity  of  dust,  which  they  agreed 
the  priest  should  take,  and  tell  his  employer  that  it  was  the 
remains  of  the  blessed  Tiburtius.  How  Deusdona  was 
*'  squared,"  and  what  he  got  for  his  not  very  valuable  com- 
plicity in  these  transactions,  does  not  appear.  But  at  last 
the  relics  were  sent  off  in  charge  of  Lunison,  the  brother  of 
Deusdona,  and  the  priest  Hunus,  as  far  as  Pavia,  while  Kat- 
leig  stopped  behind  for  a  week  to  see  if  the  robbery  was  dis- 
covered, and,  presumably,  to  act  as  a  blind  if  any  hue  and 
cry  was  raised.  But,  as  everything  remained  quiet,  the 
notary  betook  himself  to  Pavia,  where  he  found  Lunison 
and  Hunus  awaiting  his  arrival.  The  notary's  opinion  of 
the  character  of  his  worthy  colleagues,  however,  may  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that,  having  persuaded  them  to  set 
out  in  advance  along  a  road  which  he  told  them  he  was 
about  to  take,  he  immediately  adopted  another  route,  and, 
traveling  by  way  of  St.  Maurice  and  the  Lake  of  Geneva, 
eventually  reached  Soleure. 

Eginhard  tells  all  this  story  with  the  most  naive  air  of 
unconsciousness  that  there  is  anything  remarkable  about  an 
abbot,  and  a  high  officer  of  state  to  boot,  being  an  accessory, 
both  before  and  after  the  fact,  to  a  most  gross  and  scandalous 
act  of  sacrilegious  and  burglarious  robbery.  And  an  amusing 
sequel  to  the  story  proves  that  where  relics  were  concerned, 
his  friend  Hildoin,  another  high  ecclesiastical  dignitary,  was 
even  less  scrupulous  than  himself. 

On  going  to  the  palace  early  one  morning,  after  the  saints 
were  safely  bestowed  at  Seligenstadt,  he  found  Hildoin  wait- 
ing for  an  audience  in  the  Emperor's  antechamber,  and  began 
to  talk  to  him  about  the  miracle  of  the  bloody  exudation. 
In  the  course  of  conversation,  Eginhard  happened  to  allude 
to  the  remarkable  fineness  of  the  garment  of  the  blessed 
Marcellinus.  "Whereupon  Abbot  Hildoin  observed  (to  Egin- 
hard's  stupefaction)  that  his  observation  was  quite  correct. 
Much  astonished  at  this  remark  from  a  person  who  was 
supposed  not  to  have  seen  the  relics,  Eginhard  asked  him 
14 


306  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

how  he  knew  that  ?  Upon  this,  Hildoin  saw  that  he  had 
better  make  a  clean  breast  of  it,  and  he  told  the  following 
story,  which  he  had  received  from  his  priestly  agent,  Hunus. 
While  Hunus  and  Lunison  were  at  Pavia,  waiting  for  Egin- 
hard's  notary,  Hunus  (according  to  his  own  account)  had 
robbed  the  robbers.  The  relics  were  placed  in  a  church  and 
a  number  of  laymen  and  clerics,  of  whom  Hunus  was  one, 
undertook  to  keep  watch  over  them.  One  night,  however, 
all  the  watchers,  save  the  wideawake  Hunus,  went  to  sleep ; 
and  then,  according  to  the  story  which  this  "  sharp  "  ecclesi- 
astic foisted  upon  his  patron, 

it  was  borne  in  upon  his  mind  that  there  must  be  some  great 
reason  why  all  the  people,  except  himself,  had  suddenly  become 
somnolent ;  and,  determining  to  avail  himself  of  the  opportunity 
thus  offered  (oblata  occasione  utendum),  he  rose  and,  having 
lighted  a  candle,  silently  approached  the  chests.  Then,  having 
burned  through  the  threads  of  the  seals  with  the  flame  of  the 
candle,  he  quickly  opened  the  chests,  which  had  no  locks;* 
and,  taking  out  portions  of  each  of  the  bodies  which  were  thus 
exposed,  he  closed  the  chests  and  connected  the  burned  ends  of 
the  threads  with  the  seals  again,  so  that  they  appeared  not  to 
have  been  touched ;  and,  no  one  having  seen  him,  he  returned 
to  his  place.     (Cap.  hi.  23.) 

Hildoin  went  on  to  tell  Eginhard  that  Hunus  at  first 
declared  to  him  that  these  purloined  relics  belonged  to  St. 
Tiburtius ;  but  afterward  confesssed,  as  a  great  secret,  how 
he  had  come  by  them,  and  he  wound  up  his  discourse  thus : 

They  have  a  place  of  honor  beside  St.  Medardus,  where  they 
are  worshiped  with  great  veneration  by  all  the  people;  but 
whether  we  may  keep  them  or  not  is  for  your  judgment.  (Cap. 
iii.  23.) 

Poor  Eginhard  was  thrown  into  a  state  of  great  perturba- 
tion of  mind  by  this  revelation.     An  acquaintance  of  his  had 

*  The  words  are  scrinia  sine  clave,  which  seems  to  mean  "  having 
no  key."    But  the  circumstances  forbid  the  idea  of  breaking  open. 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO   THE  MIRACULOUS.       307 

recently  told  him  of  a  rumor  that  was  spread  about  that 
Hunus  had  contrived  to  abstract  all  the  remains  of  SS. 
Marcellinus  and  Petrus  while  Eginhard's  agents  were  in  a 
drunken  sleep ;  and  that,  while  the  real  relics  were  in  Abbot 
Hildoin's  hands  at  St.  Medardus,  the  shrine  at  Seligenstadt 
contained  nothing  but  a  little  dust.  Though  greatly  annoyed 
by  this  "  execrable  rumor,  spread  everywhere  by  the  subtlety 
of  the  devil,"  Eginhard  had  doubtless  comforted  himself  by 
his  supposed  knowledge  of  its  falsity,  and  he  only  now  dis- 
covered how  considerable  a  foundation  there  was  for  the 
scandal.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  insist  upon  the 
return  of  the  stolen  treasures.  One  would  have  thought  that 
the  holy  man,  who  had  admitted  himself  to  be  knowingly  a 
receiver  of  stolen  goods,  would  have  made  instant  restitution 
and  begged  only  for  absolution.  But  Eginhard  intimates 
that  he  had  very  great  difficulty  in  getting  his  brother  abbot 
to  see  that  even  restitution  was  necessary. 

Hildoin's  proceedings  were  not  of  such  a  nature  as  to  lead 
any  one  to  place  implicit  confidence  in  anything  he  might 
say ;  still  less  had  his  agent,  priest  Hunus,  established  much 
claim  to  confidence ;  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  Eginhard 
should  have  lost  no  time  in  summoning  his  notary  and 
Lunison  to  his  presence,  in  order  that  he  might  hear  what 
they  had  to  say  about  the  business.  They,  however,  at  once 
protested  that  priest  Hunus's  story  was  a  parcel  of  lies,  and 
that  after  the  relics  left  Eome  no  one  had  any  opportunity  of 
meddling  with  them.  Moreover,  Lunison,  throwing  himself 
at  Eginhard's  feet,  confessed  with  many  tears  what  actually 
took  place.  It  will  be  remembered  that  after  the  body  of  St. 
Mavcellinus  was  abstracted  from  its  tumb,  Eatleig  deposited 
it  in.  the  house  of  Deusdona,  in  charge  of  the  latter's  brother, 
Lunison.  But  Hunus,  being  very  much  disappointed  that 
he  could  not  get  hold  of  the  body  of  St.  Tiburtius,  and  afraid 
to  go  back  to  his  abbot  empty-handed,  bribed  Lunison  with 
four  pieces  of  gold  and  five  of  silver  to  give  him  access  to  the 
chest.     This  Lunison  did,  and  Hunus  helped  himself  to  as 


308  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

much  as  would  fill  a  gallon  measure  (vas  sextarii  mensuram) 
of  the  sacred  remains.  Eginhard's  indignation  at  the 
"  rapine  "  of  this  "  nequissimus  nebulo  "  is  exquisitely 
droll.  It  would  appear  that  the  adage  about  the  receiver 
being  as  bad  as  the  thief  was  not  current  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury. 

Let  us  now  briefly  sum  up  the  history  of  the  acquisition  of 
the  relics.  Eginhard  makes  a  contract  with  Deusdoua  for  the 
delivery  of  certain  relics  which  the  latter  says  he  possesses. 
Eginhard  makes  no  inquiry  how  he  came  by  them ;  other- 
wise, the  transaction  is  innocent  enough. 

Deusdona  turns  out  to  be  a  swindler,  and  has  no  relics. 
Thereupon  Eginhard's  agent,  after  due  fasting  and  prayer, 
breaks  open  the  tombs  and  helps  himself. 

Eginhard  discovers  by  the  self-betrayal  of  his  brother 
abbot,  Hildoin,  that  portions  of  his  relics  have  been  stolen 
and  conveyed  to  the  latter.  With  much  ado  he  succeeds  in 
getting  them  back. 

Hildoin's  agent,  Hunus,  in  delivering  these  stolen  goods 
to  him,  at  first  declared  they  were  the  relics  of  St.  Tiburtius, 
which  Hildoin  desired  him  to  obtain  ;  but  afterward  invent- 
ed a  story  of  their  being  the  product  of  a  theft,  which  the 
providential  drowsiness  of  his  companions  enabled  him  to 
perpetrate  from  the  relics  which  Hildoin  well  knew  were  the 
property  of  his  friend. 

Lunison,  on  the  contrary,  swears  that  all  this  story  is 
false,  and  that  he  himself  was  bribed  by  Hunus  to  allow  him 
to  steal  what  he  pleased  from  the  property  confided  to  his  own 
and  his  brother's  care  by  their  guest  Eatleig.  And  the  honest 
notary  himself  seems  to  have  no  hesitation  about  lying  and 
stealing  to  any  extent,  where  the  acquisition  of  relics  is  the 
object  in  view. 

For  a  parallel  to  these  transactions  one  must  read  a  police 
report  of  the  doings  of  a  "  long  firm  "  or  of  a  set  of  horse- 
coupers;  yet  Eginhard  seems  to  be  aware  of  nothing,  but 


VALUE   OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       309 

that  he  has  been  rather  badly  used  by  his  friend  Hildoin,  and 
the  "  nequissimus  nebulo  "  Hunus. 

It  is  not  easy  for  a  modern  Protestant,  still  less  for  any 
one  who  has  the  least  tincture  of  scientific  culture,  whether 
physical  or  historical,  to  picture  to  himself  the  state  of  mind 
of  a  man  of  the  ninth  century,  however  cultivated,  enlight- 
ened, and  sincere  he  may  have  been.  His  deepest  convictions, 
his  most  cherished  hopes,  were  bound  up  with  the  belief  in 
the  miraculous.  Life  was  a  constant  battle  between  saints 
and  demons  for  the  possession  of  the  souls  of  men.  The  most 
superstitious  among  our  modern  countrymen  turn  to  super- 
natural agencies  only  when  natural  causes  seem  insufficient ; 
to  Eginhard  and  his  friends  the  supernatural  was  the  rule, 
and  the  sufficiency  of  natural  causes  was  allowed  only  when 
there  was  nothing  to  suggest  others. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  recollected  that  the  possession  of 
miracle-working  relics  was  greatly  coveted,  not  only  on  high, 
but  on  very  low  grounds.  To  a  man  like  Eginhard,  the  mere 
satisfaction  of  the  religious  sentiment  was  obviously  a  power- 
ful attraction.  But,  more  than  this,  the  possession  of  such  a 
treasure  was  an  immense  practical  advantage.  If  the  saints 
were  duly  flattered  and  worshiped,  there  was  no  telling  what 
benefits  might  result  from  their  interposition  on  your  behalf. 
For  physical  evils,  access  to  the  shrine  was  like  the  grant  of 
the  use  of  a  universal  pill  and  ointment  manufactory ;  and 
pilgrimages  thereto  might  suffice  to  cleanse  the  performers 
from  any  amount  of  sin.  A  letter  to  Lupus,  subsequently 
Abbot  of  Ferrara,  written  while  Eginhard  was  smarting 
under  the  grief  caused  by  the  loss  of  his  much-loved  wife 
Imma,  affords  a  striking  insight  into  the  current  view  of  the 
relation  between  the  glorified  saints  and  their  worshipers. 
The  writer  shows  that  he  is  anything  but  satisfied  with  the 
way  in  which  he  has  been  treated  by  the  blessed  martyrs 
whose  remains  he  has  taken  such  pains  to  "  convey  "  to  Selig- 
enstadt,  and  to  honor  there  as  they  would  never  have  been 
honored  in  their  Roman  obscurity. 


310  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

It  is  an  aggravation  of  my  grief  and  a  reopening  of  my 
wound,  that  our  vows  have  been  of  no  avail,  and  that  the  faith 
which  we  placed  in  the  merits  and  intervention  of  the  martyrs 
has  been  utterly  disappointed. 

We  may  admit,  then,  without  impeachment  of  Eginhard's 
sincerity,  or  of  his  honor  under  all  ordinary  circumstances, 
that  when  piety,  self-interest,  the  glory  of  the  Church  in  gen- 
eral, and  that  of  the  church  at  Seligenstadt  in  particular,  all 
pulled  one  way,  even  the  workaday  principles  of  morality  were 
disregarded ;  and,  a  fortiori,  anything  like  proper  investiga- 
tion of  the  reality  of  alleged  miracles  was  thrown  to  the  winds. 

And  if  this  was  the  condition  of  mind  of  such  a  man  as 
Eginhard,  what  is  not  legitimate  to  suppose  may  have  been 
that  of  Deacon  Deusdona,  Lunison,  Hunus,  and  Company, 
thieves  and  cheats  by  their  own  confession,  or  of  the  prob- 
ably hysterical  nun,  or  of  the  professional  beggars,  for  whose 
incapacity  to  walk  and  straighten  themselves  there  is  no 
guarantee  but  their  own  ?  Who  is  to  make  sure  that  the  ex- 
orcist of  the  demon  Wiggo  was  not  just  such  another  priest 
as  Hunus ;  and  is  it  not  at  least  possible,  when  Eginhard's 
servants  dreamed,  night  after  night,  in  such  a  curiously  coin- 
cident fashion,  that  a  careful  inquirer  might  have  found  they 
were  very  anxious  to  please  their  master  ? 

Quite  apart  from  deliberate  and  conscious  fraud  (which  is 
a  rarer  thing  than  is  often  supposed),  people,  whose  myth- 
opoeic  faculty  is  once  stirred,  are  capable  of  saying  the  thing 
that  is  not,  and  of  acting  as  they  should  not,  to  an  extent 
which  is  hardly  imaginable  by  persons  who  are  not  so  easily 
affected  by  the  contagion  of  blind  faith.  There  is  no  falsity 
so  gross  that  honest  men  and,  still  more,  virtuous  women,  anx- 
ious to  promote  a  good  cause,  will  not  lend  themselves  to  ifc 
without  any  clear  consciousness  of  the  moral  bearings  of  what 
they  are  doing. 

The  cases  of  miraculously  effected  cures  of  which  Egin- 
hard is  ocular  .witness  appear  to  belong  to  classes  of  disease  in 
which  malingering  is  possible  or  hysteria  presumable.    With- 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO   THE    MIRACULOUS.       3H 

out  modern  means  of  diagnosis,  the  names  given  to  them  are 
quite  worthless.  One  "  miracle,"  however,  in  which  the  pa- 
tient, a  woman,  was  cured  by  the  mere  sight  of  the  church  in 
which  the  relics  of  the  blessed  martyrs  lay,  is  an  unmistak- 
able case  of  dislocation  of  the  lower  jaw ;  and  it  is  obvious 
that,  as  not  unfrequently  happens  in  such  accidents  in  weakly 
subjects,  the  jaw  slipped  suddenly  back  into  place,  perhaps  in 
consequence  of  a  jolt,  as  the  woman  rode  toward  the  church. 
(Cap.  v.  53.)* 

There  is  also  a  good  deal  said  about  a  very  questionable 
blind  man — one  Albricus  (Alberich?) — who,  having  been 
cured,  not  of  his  blindness,  but  of  another  disease  under 
which  he  labored,  took  up  his  quarters  at  Seligenstadt,  and 
came  out  as  a  prophet,  inspired  by  the  Archangel  Gabriel. 
Eginhard  intimates  that  his  prophecies  were  fulfilled ;  but  as 
he  does  not  state  exactly  what  they  were  or  how  they  were 
accomplished,  the  statement  must  be  accepted  with  much 
caution.  It  is  obvious  that  he  was  not  the  man  to  hesitate  to 
"  ease  "  a  prophecy  until  it  fitted,  if  the  credit  of  the  shrine 
of  his  favorite  saints  could  be  increased  by  such  a  procedure. 
There  is  no  impeachment  of  his  honor  in  the  supposition. 
The  logic  of  the  matter  is  quite  simple,  if  somewhat  sophisti- 
cal. The  holiness  of  the  church  of  the  martyrs  guarantees 
the  reality  of  the  appearance  of  the  Archangel  Gabriel  there, 
and  what  the  archangel  says  must  be  true.  Therefore,  if 
anything  seem  to  be  wrong,  that  must  be  the  mistake  of  the 
transmitter ;  and,  in  justice  to  the  archangel,  it  must  be  sup- 
pressed or  set  right.  This  sort  of  "  reconciliation "  is  not 
unknown  in  quite  modern  times,  and  among  people  who 
would  be  very  much  shocked  to  be  compared  with  a  "  be- 
nighted papist "  of  the  ninth  century. 

*  Eginhard  speaks  with  lofty  contempt  of  the  "  vana  ac  superstitiosa 
praesuniptio  "  of  the  poor  woman's  companions  in  trying  to  alleviate  her 
sufferings  with  "  herbs  and  frivolous  incantations."  Vain  enough,  no 
doubt,  but  the  "  mulierculae  "  might  have  returned  the  epithet  "  super- 
stitious "  with  interest. 


312  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

The  readers  of  this  essay  are,  I  imagine,  very  largely  com- 
posed of  people  who  would  be  shocked  to  be  regarded  as  any- 
thing but  enlightened  Protestants.  It  is  not  unlikely  that 
those  of  them  who  have  accompanied  me  thus  far  may  be 
disposed  to  say,  "  Well,  this  is  all  very  amusing  as  a  story,  but 
what  is  the  practical  interest  of  it  ?  We  are  not  likely  to  be- 
lieve in  the  miracles  worked  by  the  spolia  of  SS.  Marcellinus 
and  Petrus,  or  by  those  of  any  other  saints  in  the  Eoman 
Calendar." 

The  practical  interest  is  this :  if  you  do  not  believe  in 
these  miracles  recounted  by  a  witness  whose  character  and 
competency  are  firmly  established,  whose  sincerity  can  not  be 
doubted,  and  who  appeals  to  his  sovereign  and  other  con- 
temporaries as  witnesses  of  the  truth  of  what  he  says,  in  a 
document  of  which  an  MS.  copy  exists,  probably  dating  with- 
in a  century  of  the  author's  death,  why  do  you  profess  to  be- 
lieve in  stories  of  a  like  character,  which  are  found  in  docu- 
ments of  the  dates  and  of  the  authorship  of  which  nothing  is 
certainly  determined,  and  no  known  copies  of  which  come 
within  two  or  three  centuries  of  the  events  they  record.  If 
it  be  true  that  the  four  Gospels  and  the  Acts  were  written  by 
Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  all  that  we  know  of  these 
persons  comes  to  nothing  in  comparison  with  our  knowledge 
of  Eginhard ;  and  not  only  is  there  no  proof  that  the  tradi- 
tional authors  of  these  works  wrote  them,  but  very  strong 
reasons  to  the  contrary  may  be  alleged.  If,  therefore,  you  re- 
fuse to  believe  that  "  Wiggo  "  was  cast  out  of  the  possessed 
girl  on  Eginhard's  authority,  with  what  justice  can  you  pro- 
fess to  believe  that  the  legion  of  devils  were  cast  out  of  the 
man  among  the  tombs  of  the  Gadarenes?  And  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  you  accept  Eginhard's  evidence,  why  do  you 
laugh  at  the  supposed  efficacy  of  relics  and  the  saint-worship 
of  the  modern  Romanists  ?  It  can  not  be  pretended,  in  the 
face  of  all  evidence,  that  the  Jews  of  the  year  30  A.D.,  or 
thereabouts,  were  less  imbued  with  the  belief  in  the  super- 
natural than  were  the  Franks  of  the  year  800  A.D.    The  same 


VALUE  OF  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       313 

influences  were  at  work  in  each  case,  and  it  is  only  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  results  were  the  same.  If  the  evidence  of 
Eginhard  is  insufficient  to  lead  reasonable  men  to  believe  in 
the  miracles  he  relates,  a  fortiori  the  evidence  afforded  by  the 
Gospels  and  the  Acts  must  be  so.* 

But  it  may  be  said  that  no  serious  critic  denies  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  four  great  Pauline  Epistles — Galatians,  First 
and  Second  Corinthians,  and  Komans — and  that  in  three  out 
of  these  four  Paul  lays  claim  to  the  power  of  working  mira- 
cles, f  Must  we  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  Apostle  to  the 
Gentiles  has  stated  that  which  is  false  ?  But  to  how  much 
does  this  so-called  claim  amount?  It  may  mean  much  or 
little.  Paul  nowhere  tells  us  what  he  did  in  this  direction ; 
and,  in  his  sore  need  to  justify  his  assumption  of  apostleship 
against  the  sneers  of  his  enemies,  it  is  hardly  likely  that  if 
he  had  any  very  striking  cases  to  bring  forward  he  would 
have  neglected  evidence  so  well  calculated  to  put  them  to 
shame.  And,  without  the  slightest  impeachment  of  Paul's 
veracity,  we  must  further  remember  that  his  strongly  marked 
mental  characteristics,  displayed  in  unmistakable  fashion  in 
these  Epistles,  are  anything  but  those  which  would  justify 
us  in  regarding  him  as  a  critical  witness  respecting  matters 
of  fact,  or  as  a  trustworthy  interpreter  of  their  significance. 
When  a  man  testifies  to  a  miracle,  he  not  only  states  a  fact, 
but  he  adds  an  interpretation  of  the  fact.  "We  may  admit 
his  evidence  as  to  the  former,  and  yet  think  his  opinion  as  to 
the  latter  worthless.  If  Eginhard 's  calm  and  objective  narra- 
tive of  the  historical  events  of  his  time  is  no  guarantee  for 
the  soundness  of  his  judgment  where  the  supernatural  is  con- 
cerned, the  heated  rhetoric  of  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  his 

*  Of  course  there  is  nothing  new  in  this  argment ;  but  it  does  not 
grow  weaker  by  age.  And  the  case  of  Eginhard  is  far  more  instructive 
than  that  of  Augustine,  because  the  former  has  so  very  frankly,  though 
incidentally,  revealed  to  us  not  only  his  own  mental  and  moral  habits, 
but  those  of  the  people  about  him. 

f  See  1  Cor.  xii.  10-28 ;  2  Cor.  vi.  12 ;  Rom.  xv.  19. 


314  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

absolute  confidence  in  the  "  inner  light,"  and  the  extraordi- 
nary conceptions  of  the  nature  and  requirements  of  logical 
proof  which  he  betrays,  in  page  after  page  of  his  Epistles, 
afford  still  less  security. 

There  is  a  comparatively  modern  man  who  shared  to  the 
full  Paul's  trust  in  the  "  inner  light,"  and  who,  though  widely 
different  from  the  fiery  evangelist  of  Tarsus  in  various  obvi- 
ous particulars,  yet,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  shares  his  deepest 
characteristics.  I  speak  of  George  Fox,  who  separated  him- 
self from  the  current  Protestantism  of  England,  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  as  Paul  separated  himself  from  the  Judaism 
of  the  first  century,  at  the  bidding  of  the  "inner  light"; 
who  went  through  persecutions  as  serious  as  those  which 
Paul  enumerates ;  who  was  beaten,  stoned,  cast  out  for  dead, 
imprisoned  nine  times,  sometimes  for  long  periods ;  who  was 
in  perils  on  land  and  perils  at  sea.  George  Fox  was  an  even 
more  widely  traveled  missionary ;  while  his  success  in  founding 
congregations,  and  his  energy  in  visiting  them,  not  merely  in 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland  and  the  West  India  Islands,  but 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  and  that  of  North  America — 
was  no  less  remarkable.  A  few  years  after  Fox  began  to 
preach,  there  were  reckoned  to  be  a  thousand  Friends  in 
prison  in  the  various  jails  of  England ;  at  his  death,  less  than 
fifty  years  after  the  foundation  of  the  sect,  there  were  70,000 
Quakers  in  the  United  Kingdom.  The  cheerfulness  with 
which  these  people — women  as  well  as  men — underwent  mar- 
tyrdom in  this  country  and  in  the  New  England  States  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the  history  of  religion. 

No  one  who  reads  the  voluminous  autobiography  of 
"  Honest  George "  can  doubt  the  man's  utter  truthfulness ; 
and  though,  in  his  multitudinous  letters,  he  but  rarely  rises 
far  above  the  incoherent  commonplaces  of  a  street  preacher, 
there  can  be  no  question  of  his  power  as  a  speaker,  nor  any 
doubt  as  to  the  dignity  and  attractiveness  of  his  personality, 
or  of  his  possession  of  a  large  amount  of  practical  good  sense 
and  governing  faculty. 


VALUE  OP  WITNESS  TO  THE  MIRACULOUS.       315 

But  that  George  Fox  had  full  faith  in  his  own  powers  as 
a  miracle- worker,  the  following  passage  of  his  autobiography 
(to  which  others  might  be  added)  demonstrates  : — 

Now  after  I  was  set  at  liberty  from  Nottingham  jail  (where 
I  had  been  kept  a  prisoner  a  pretty  long  time)  I  traveled  as  be- 
fore, in  the  work  of  the  Lord.  And  coming  to  Mansfield  Wood- 
house,  there  was  a  distracted  woman,  under  a  doctor's  hand, 
with  her  hair  let  loose  all  about  her  ears  ;  and  he  was  about  to 
let  her  blood,  she  being  first  bound,  and  many  people  being 
about  her,  holding  her  by  violence  ;  but  he  could  get  no  blood 
from  her.  And  I  desired  them  to  unbind  her  and  let  her  alone  ; 
for  they  could  not  touch  the  spirit  in  her  by  which  she  was 
tormented.  So  they  did  unbind  her,  and  I  was  moved  to  speak 
to  her,  and  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  to  bid  her  be  quiet  and 
still.  And  she  was  so.  And  the  Lord's  power  settled  her 
mind  and  she  mended  ;  and  afterward  received  the  truth  and 
continued  in  it  to  her  death.  And  the  Lord's  name  was  hon- 
ored ;  to  whom  the  glory  of  all  his  works  belongs.  Ma,ny  great 
and  wonderful  things  were  wrought  by  the  heavenly  power  in 
those  days.  For  the  Lord  made  bare  his  omnipotent  arm  and 
manifested  his  power  to  the  astonishment  of  many  ;  by  the 
healing  virtue  whereof  many  have  been  delivered  from  great 
infirmities,  and  the  devils  were  made  subject  through  his  name  ; 
of  which  particular  instances  might  be  given  beyond  what  this 
unbelieving  age  is  able  to  receive  or  bear.* 

It  needs  no  long  study  of  Fox's  writings,  however,  to 
arrive  at  the  conviction  that  the  distinction  between  subject- 
ive and  objective  verities  had  not  the  same  place  in  his  mind 
as  it  has  in  that  of  ordinary  mortals.  When  an  ordinary 
person  would  say  "  I  thought  so  and  so,"  or  "  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  do  so  and  so/'  George  Fox  says,  "  It  was  opened  to 
me,"  or  "  at  the  command  of  God  I  did  so  and  so."  "  Then 
at  the  command  of  God,  on  the  ninth  day  of  the  seventh 
month  1643  (Fox  being  just  nineteen),  I  left  my  relations 

*  A  Journal  or  Historical  Account  of  the  Life,  Travels,  Sufferings, 
and  Christian  Experiences,  &c.y  of  George  Fox.    Ed.  1694,  pp.  27,  28. 


316  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

and  brake  off  all  familiarity  or  friendship  with  young  or  old." 
"  About  the  beginning  of  the  year  1647  I  was  moved  of  the 
Lord  to  go  into  Darbyshire."  Fox  hears  voices  and  he  sees 
visions  some  of  which  he  brings  before  the  reader  with  apoc- 
alyptic power  in  the  simple  and  strong  English,  alike  un- 
tutored and  undefiled,  of  which,  like  John  Bunyan,  his  con- 
temporary, he  was  a  master. 

"  And  one  morning,  as  I  was  sitting  by  the  fire,  a  great 
cloud  came  over  me  and  a  temptation  beset  me ;  and  I  sate 
still.  And  it  was  said,  All  things  come  by  Nature.  And  the 
elements  and  stars  came  over  me ;  so  that  I  was  in  a  man- 
ner quite  clouded  with  it.  .  .  .  And  as  I  sate  still  under  it, 
and  let  it  alone,  a  living  hope  arose  in  me,  and  a  true  voice 
arose  in  me  which  said,  There  is  a  living  God  who  made  all 
things.  And  immediately  the  cloud  and  the  temptation  van- 
ished away,  and  life  rose  over  it  all,  and  my  heart  was  glad 
and  I  praised  the  living  God  "  (p.  13). 

If  George  Fox  could  speak,  as  he  proves  in  this  and  some 
other  passages  he  could  write,  his  astounding  influence  on 
the  contemporaries  of  Milton  and  Cromwell  is  no  mystery. 
But  this  modern  reproduction  of  the  ancient  prophet,  with 
his  "  Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  "  This  is  the  work  of  the  Lord," 
steeped  in  supernaturalism  and  glorying  in  blind  faith,  is 
the  mental  antipodes  of  the  philosopher,  founded  in  natural- 
ism and  a  fanatic  for  evidence,  to  whom  these  affirmations 
inevitably  suggest  the  previous  question;  "How  do  you 
know  that  the  Lord  saith  it :  "  "  How  do  you  know  that  the 
Lord  doeth  it  ? "  and  who  is  compelled  to  demand  that  ra- 
tional ground  for  belief  without  which  to  the  man  of  science, 
assent  is  merely  an  immoral  pretense. 

And  it  is  this  rational  ground  of  belief  which  the  writers 
of  the  Gospels,  no  less  than  Paul,  and  Eginhard,  and  Fox, 
so  little  dream  of  offering  that  they  would  regard  the  de- 
mand for  it  as  a  kind  of  blasphemy. 


XL 
AGNOSTICISM :  A  REJOINDER. 

Those  who  passed  from  Dr.  "Wace's  article  in  the  last 
number  of  this  Review  to  the  anticipatory  confutation  of  it 
which  followed  in  "  The  New  Reformation,"  must  have  en- 
joyed the  pleasure  of  a  dramatic  surprise — just  as  when  the 
fifth  act  of  a  new  play  proves  unexpectedly  bright  and  inter- 
esting. Mrs.  "Ward  will,  I  hope,  pardon  the  comparison,  if  I 
say  that  her  effective  clearing  away  of  antiquated  incum- 
brances from  the  lists  of  the  controversy,  reminds  me  of 
nothing  so  much  as  of  the  action  of  some  neat-handed,  but 
strong-wristed,  Phyllis,  who,  gracefully  wielding  her  long- 
handled  "  Turk's  head,"  sweeps  away  the  accumulated  results 
of  the  toil  of  generations  of  spiders.  I  am  the  more  indebted 
to  this  luminous  sketch  of  the  results  of  critical  investigation, 
as  it  is  carried  out  among  those  theologians  who  are  men  of 
science  and  not  mere  counsel  for  creeds,  since  it  has  relieved 
me  from  the  necessity  of  dealing  with  the  greater  part  of  Dr. 
Wace's  polemic,  and  enables  me  to  devote  more  space  to  the 
really  important  issues  which  have  been  raised.* 

Perhaps,  however,  it  may  be  well  for  me  to  observe  that 
approbation  of  the  manner  in  which  a  great  biblical  scholar, 
for  instance,  Reuss,  does  his  work  does  not  commit  me  to  the 

*I  may  perhaps  return  to  the  question  of  the  authorship  of  the 
Gospels.  For  the  present  I  must  content  myself  with  warning  my 
readers  against  any  reliance  upon  Dr.  Wace's  statements  as  to  the  re- 
sults arrived  at  by  modern  criticism.  They  are  as  gravely  as  surpris- 
ingly erroneous. 


318  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

adoption  of  all,  or  indeed  any  of  his  views ;  and,  further,  that 
the  disagreements  of  a  series  of  investigators  do  not  in  any 
way  interfere  with  the  fact  that  each  of  them  has  made  im- 
portant contributions  to  the  body  of  truth  ultimately  estab- 
lished. If  I  cite  BuSon,  Linnaeus,  Lamarck,  and  Cuvier,  as 
having  each  and  all  taken  a  leading  share  in  building  up 
modern  biology,  the  statement  that  every  one  of  these  great 
naturalists  disagreed  with,  and  even  more  or  less  contradicted, 
all  the  rest  is  quite  true ;  but  the  supposition  that  the  latter 
assertion  is  in  any  way  inconsistent  with  the  former,  would 
betray  a  strange  ignorance  of  the  manner  in  which  all  true 
science  advances. 

Dr.  Wace  takes  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  make  it  appear 
that  I  have  desired  to  evade  the  real  questions  raised  by  his 
attack  upon  me  at  the  Church  Congress.  I  assure  the  rev- 
erend Principal  that  in  this,  as  in  some  other  respects,  he  has 
entertained  a  very  erroneous  conception  of  my  intentions. 
Things  would  assume  more  accurate  proportions  in  Dr. 
Wace's  mind  if  he  would  kindly  remember  that  it  is  just 
thirty  years  since  ecclesiastical  thunderbolts  began  to  fly 
about  my  ears.  I  have  had  the  "  Lion  and  the  Bear "  to 
deal  with,  and  it  is  long  since  I  got  quite  used  to  the  threat- 
enings  of  episcopal  Goliaths,  whose  croziers  were  like  unto  a 
weaver's  beam.  So  that  I  almost  think  I  might  not  have 
noticed  Dr.  Wace's  attack,  personal  as  it  was ;  and  although, 
as  he  is  good  enough  to  tell  us,  separate  copies  are  to  be  had 
for  the  modest  equivalent  of  twopence,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
did  not  come  under  my  notice  for  a  long  time  after  it  was 
made.  May  I  further  venture  to  point  out  that  (reckoning 
postage)  the  expenditure  of  twopence-halfpenny,  or,  at  the 
most,  threepence,  would  have  enabled  Dr.  Wace  so  far  to 
comply  with  ordinary  conventions,  as  to  direct  my  attention 
to  the  fact  that  he  had  attacked  me  before  a  meeting  at 
which  I  was  not  present  ?  I  really  am  not  responsible  for 
the  five  months'  neglect  of  which  Dr.  Wace  complains.  Sin- 
gularly enough",  the  Englishry  who  swarmed  about  the  Enga- 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  319 

dine,  during  the  three  months  that  I  was  being  brought  back 
to  life  by  the  glorious  air  and  perfect  comfort  of  the  Maloja, 
did  not,  in  my  hearing,  say  anything  about  the  important 
events  which  had  taken  place  at  the  Church  Congress ;  and 
I  think  I  can  venture  to  affirm  that  there  was  not  a  single 
copy  of  Dr.  Wace's  pamphlet  in  any  of  the  hotel  libraries 
which  I  rummaged  in  search  of  something  more  edifying 
than  dull  English  or  questionable  French  novels. 

And  now,  having,  as  I  hope,  set  myself  right  with  the 
public  as  regards  the  sins  of  commission  and  omission 
with  which  I  have  been  charged,  I  feel  free  to  deal  with 
matters  to  which  time  and  type  may  be  more  profitably  de- 
voted. 

I  believe  that  there  is  not  a  solitary  argument  I  have 
used,  or  that  I  am  about  to  use,  which  is  original,  or  has 
anything  to  do  with  the  fact  that  I  have  been  chiefly  occu- 
pied with  natural  science.  They  are  all,  facts  and  reasoning 
alike,  either  identical  with,  or  consequential  upon,  proposi- 
tions which  are  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  scholars  and 
theologians  of  the  highest  repute  in  the  only  two  countries, 
Holland  and  Germany,*  in  which,  at  the  present  time,  pro- 
fessors of  theology  are  to  be  found,  whose  tenure  of  their 
posts  does  not  depend  upon  the  results  to  which  their  inquir- 
ies lead  them.f     It  is  true  that,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  I 

*  The  United  States  ought,  perhaps,  to  be  added,  but  I  am  not  sure. 

t  Imagine  that  all  our  chairs  of  Astronomy  had  been  founded  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  and  that  their  incumbents  were  bound  to  sign 
Ptolemaic  articles.  In  that  case,  with  every  respect  for  the  efforts  of 
persons  thus  hampered  to  attain  and  expound  the  truth,  I  think  men 
of  common  sense  would  go  elsewhere  to  learn  astronomy.  Zeller's  Vor- 
trage  und  Abhandlungen  were  published  and  came  into  my  hands  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago.  The  writer's  rank,  as  a  theologian  to  begin 
with,  and  subsequently  as  a  historian  of  Greek  philosophy,  is  of  the 
highest.  Among  these  essays  are  two — Das  Urchristenthum  and  Die 
Tubinger  historische  Schule — which  are  likely  to  be  of  more  use  to 
those  who  wish  to  know  the  real  state  of  the  case  than  all  that  the 
official  "apologists,"  with  their  one  eye  on  truth  and  the  other  on 


320  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

have  satisfied  myself  of  the  soundness  of  the  foundations  on 
which  my  arguments  are  built,  and  I  desire  to  be  held  fully 
responsible  for  everything  I  say.  But,  nevertheless,  my  posi- 
tion is  really  no  more  than  that  of  an  expositor ;  and  my 
justification  for  undertaking  it  is  simply  that  conviction  of 
the  supremacy  of  private  judgment  (indeed,  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  escaping  it)  which  is  the  foundation  of  the  Protes- 
tant Reformation,  and  which  was  the  doctrine  accepted  by 
the  vast  majority  of  the  Anglicans  of  my  youth,  before  that 
backsliding  toward  the  ''  beggarly  rudiments "  of  an  effete 
and  idolatrous  sacerdotalism  which  has,  even  now,  provided 
us  with  the  saddest  spectacle  which  has  been  offered  to  the 
eyes  of  Englishmen  in  this  generation.  A  high  court  of 
ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  with  a  host  of  great  lawyers  in 
battle  array,  is  and,  for  Heaven  knows  how  long,  will  be, 
occupied  with  these  very  questions  of  "  washing  of  cups  and 
pots  and  brazen  vessels,"  which  the  Master,  whose  professed 
representatives  are  rending  the  Church  over  these  squabbles, 
had  in  his  mind  when,  as  we  are  told,  he  uttered  the  scathing 
rebuke : — 

Well  did  Isaiah  prophesy  of  you  hypocrites,  as  it  is  writ- 
ten:— 

This  people  honoreth  me  with  their  lips, 

But  their  heart  is  far  from  me : 

But  in  vain  do  they  worship  me. 

Teaching  as  their  doctrines  the  precepts  of  men. 

(Mark  vii.  6-7.) 

Men  who  can  be  absorbed  in  bickerings  over  miserable  dis- 
putes of  this  kind  can  have  but  little  sympathy  with  the  old 
evangelical  doctrine  of  the  "  open  Bible,"  or  anything  but  a 
grave  misgiving  of  the  results  of  diligent  reading  of  the 
Bible,  without  the  help  of  ecclesiastical  spectacles,  by  the 

the  tenets  of  their  sect,  have  written.  For  the  opinion  of  a  scientific 
theologian  about-  theologians  of  this  stamp  see  pp.  225  and  227  of  the 
Vortrdge. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A   REJOINDER.  321 

mass  of  the  people.  Greatly  to  the  surprise  of  many  of  my 
friends,  I  have  always  advocated  the  reading  of  the  Bible, 
and  the  diffusion  of  the  study  of  that  most  remarkable  col- 
lection of  books  among  the  people.  Its  teachings  are  so  in- 
finitely superior  to  those  of  the  sects,  who  are  just  as  busy 
now  as  the  Pharisees  were  eighteen  hundred  years  ago,  in 
smothering  them  under  "  the  precepts  of  men  " ;  it  is  so  cer- 
tain, to  my  mind,  that  the  Bible  contains  within  itself  the 
refutation  of  nine-tenths  of  the  mixture  of  sophistical  meta- 
physics and  old-world  superstition  which  has  been  piled 
round  it  by  the  so-called  Christians  of  later  times ;  it  is  so 
clear  that  the  only  immediate  and  ready  antidote  to  the 
poison  which  has  been  mixed  with  Christianity,  to  the  in- 
toxication and  delusion  of  mankind,  lies  in  copious  draughts 
from  the  undefiled  spring,  that  I  exercise  the  right  and  duty 
of  free  judgment  on  the  part  of  every  man,  mainly  for  the 
purpose  of  inducing  other  laymen  to  follow  my  example.  If 
the  New  Testament  is  translated  into  Zulu  by  Protestant 
missionaries,  it  must  be  assumed  that  a  Zulu  convert  is  com- 
petent to  draw  from  its  contents  all  the  truths  which  it  is 
necessary  for  him  to  believe.  I  trust  that  I  may,  without 
immodesty,  claim  to  be  put  on  the  same  footing  as  the  Zulu. 
The  most  constant  reproach  which  is  launched  against 
persons  of  my  way  of  thinking  is  that  it  is  all  very  well  for 
us  to  talk  about  the  deductions  of  scientific  thought,  but 
what  are  the  poor  and  the  uneducated  to  do  ?  Has  it  ever 
occurred  to  those  who  talk  in  this  fashion,  that  their  creeds 
and  the  articles  of  their  several  confessions,  their  determina- 
tion of  the  exact  nature  and  extent  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
their  expositions  of  the  real  meaning  of  that  which  is  written 
in  the  Epistles  (to  leave  aside  all  questions  concerning  the 
Old  Testament),  are  nothing  more  than  deductions  which,  at 
any  rate,  profess  to  be  the  result  of  strictly  scientific  think- 
ing, and  which  are  not  worth  attending  to  unless  they  really 
possess  that  character?  If  it  is  not  historically  true  that 
such  and  such  things  happened  in  Palestine  eighteen  centu- 


322  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ries  ago,  what  becomes  of  Christianity  ?  And  what  is  his- 
torical truth  but  that  of  which  the  evidence  bears  strict  sci- 
entific investigation  ?  I  do  not  call  to  mind  any  problem  of 
natural  science  which  has  come  under  my  notice  which  is 
more  difficult,  or  more  curiously  interesting  as  a  mere  prob- 
lem, than  that  of  the  origin  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  and  that 
of  the  historical  value  of  the  narratives  which  they  contain. 
The  Christianity  of  the  Churches  stands  or  falls  by  the  re- 
sults of  the  purely  scientific  investigation  of  these  questions. 
They  were  first  taken  up  in  a  purely  scientific  spirit  just 
about  a  century  ago ;  they  have  been  studied  over  and  over 
again  by  men  of  vast  knowledge  and  critical  acumen ;  but  he 
would  be  a  rash  man  who  should  assert  that  any  solution  of 
these  problems,  as  yet  formulated,  is  exhaustive.  The  most 
that  can  be  said  is  that  certain  prevalent  solutions  are  cer- 
tainly false,  while  others  are  more  or  less  probably  true. 

If  I  am  doing  my  best  to  rouse  my  countrymen  out  of 
their  dogmatic  slumbers,  it  is  not  that  they  may  be  amused 
by  seeing  who  gets  the  best  of  it  in  a  contest  between  a  "  sci- 
entist "  and  a  theologian.  The  serious  question  is  whether 
theological  men  of  science,  or  theological  special  pleaders, 
are  to  have  the  confidence  of  the  general  public ;  it  is  the 
question  whether  a  country  in  which  it  is  possible  for  a  body 
of  excellent  clerical  and  lay  gentlemen  to  discuss,  in  public 
meeting  assembled,  how  much  it  is  desirable  to  let  the  con- 
gregations of  the  faithful  know  of  the  results  of  biblical  criti- 
cism, is  likely  to  wake  up  with  anything  short  of  the  grasp 
of  a  rough  lay  hand  upon  its  shoulder;  it  is  the  question 
whether  the  New  Testament  books  being,  as  I  believe  they 
were,  written  and  compiled  by  people  who,  according  to  their 
lights,  were  perfectly  sincere,  will  not,  when  properly  studied 
as  ordinary  historical  documents,  afford  us  the  means  of  self- 
criticism.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  JS"ew  Testa- 
ment books  are  not  responsible  for  the  doctrine  invented  by 
the  Churches  that  they  are  anything  but  ordinary  historical 
documents.     The  author  of  the  third  gospel  tells  us,  as 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  323 

straightforwardly  as  a  man  can,  that  he  has  no  claim  to  any 
other  character  than  that  of  an  ordinary  compiler  and  editor, 
who  had  before  him  the  works  of  many  and  variously  quali- 
fied predecessors. 

In  my  former  papers,  according  to  Dr.  Wace,  I  have 
evaded  giving  an  answer  to  his  main  proposition,  which  he 
states  as  follows — 

Apart  from  all  disputed  points  of  criticism,  no  one  practi- 
cally doubts  that  our  Lord  lived,  and  that  He  died  on  the  cross, 
in  the  most  intense  sense  of  filial  relation  to  His  Father  in 
Heaven,  and  that  He  bore  testimony  to  that  Father's  provi- 
dence, love,  and  grace  toward  mankind.  The  Lord's  Prayer 
affords  a  sufficient  evidence  on  these  points.  If  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  alone  be  added,  the  whole  unseen  world,  of  which 
the  Agnostic  refuses  to  know  anything,  stands  unveiled  before 
us.  ...  If  Jesus  Christ  preached  that  Sermon,  made  those 
promises,  and  taught  that  prayer,  then  any  one  who  says  that 
we  know  nothing  of  God,  or  of  a  future  life,  or  of  an  unseen 
world,  says  that  he  does  not  believe  Jesus  Christ  (pp.  354-355). 

Again — 

The  main  question  at  issue,  in  a  word,  is  one  which  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  has  chosen  to  leave  entirely  on  one  side — whether, 
namely,  allowing  for  the  utmost  uncertainty  on  other  points  of 
the  criticism  to  which  he  appeals,  there  is  any  reasonable  doubt 
that  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  afford  a 
true  account  of  our  Lord's  essential  belief  and  cardinal  teach- 
ing (p.  355). 

I  certainly  was  not  aware  that  I  had  evaded  the  questions 
here  stated ;  indeed  I  should  say  that  I  have  indicated  my 
reply  to  them  pretty  clearly ;  but,  as  Dr.  Wace  wants  a  plainer 
answer,  he  shall  certainly  be  gratified.  If,  as  Dr.  Wace  de- 
clares it  is,  his  "  whole  case  is  involved  in  "  the  argument  as 
stated  in  the  latter  of  these  two  extracts,  so  much  the  worse 
for  his  whole  case.     For  I  am  of  opinion  that  there  is  the 


324  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

gravest  reason  for  doubting  whether  the  "  Sermon  on  the 
Mount "  was  ever  preached,  and  whether  the  so-called  "  Lord's 
Prayer  "  was  ever  prayed,  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  My  reasons 
for  this  opinion  are,  among  others,  these :  There  is  now  no 
doubt  that  the  three  Synoptic  Gospels,  so  far  from  being  the 
work  of  three  independent  writers,  are  closely  interdepend- 
ent,* and  that  in  one  of  two  ways.  Either  all  three  contain, 
as  their  foundation,  versions,  to  a  large  extent  verbally  iden- 
tical, of  one  and  the  same  tradition ;  or  two  of  them  are  thus 
closely  dependent  on  the  third ;  and  the  opinion  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  best  critics  has  of  late  years  more  and  more  con- 
verged toward  the  conviction  that  our  canonical  second  gos- 
pel (the  so-called  "  Mark's  "  Gospel)  is  that  which  most  close- 
ly represents  the  primitive  groundwork  of  the  three,  f  That 
I  take  to  be  one  of  the  most  valid  results  of  New  Testament 
criticism,  of  immeasurably  greater  importance  than  the  dis- 
cussion about  dates  and  authorship. 

But  if,  as  I  believe  to  be  the  case,  beyond  any  rational 


*  I  suppose  this  is  what  Dr.  Wace  is  thinking  about  when  he  says 
that  I  allege  that  there  "  is  no  visible  escape  "  from  the  supposition  of 
an  Ur-Marcus  (p.  367).  That  a  "  theologian  of  repute  "  should  confound 
an  indisputable  fact  with  one  of  the  modes  of  explaining  that  fact  is 
not  so  singular  as  those  who  are  unaccustomed  to  the  ways  of  theo- 
logians might  imagine. 

\  Any  examiner  whose  duty  it  has  been  to  examine  into  a  case  of 
"  copying  "  will  be  particularly  well  prepared  to  appreciate  the  force  of 
the  case  stated  in  that  most  excellent  little  book,  The  Common  Tradi- 
tion of  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  by  Dr.  Abbott  and  Mr.  Rushbrooke  (Mac- 
millan,  1884).  To  those  who  have  not  passed  through  such  painful  ex- 
periences I  may  recommend  the  brief  discussion  of  the  genuineness  of 
the  "  Casket  Letters  "  in  my  friend  Mr.  Skelton's  interesting  book,  Mart- 
land  of  Lethington.  The  second  edition  of  Holtzmann's  Lehrbuch,  pub- 
lished in  1886,  gives  a  remarkably  fair  and  full  account  of  the  present 
results  of  criticism.  At  p.  366  he  writes  that  the  present  burning  ques- 
tion is  whether  the  "  relatively  primitive  narrative  and  the  root  of  the 
other  synoptic  texts  is  contained  in  Matthew  or  in  Mark.  It  is  only  on 
this  point  that  properly  informed  (sachkundige)  critics  differ,"  and  he 
decides  in  favor  of  Mark. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  325 

doubt  or  dispute,  the  second  gospel  is  the  nearest  extant  rep- 
resentative of  the  oldest  tradition,  whether  written  or  oral, 
how  comes  it  that  it  contains  neither  the  "  Sermon  on  the 
Mount "  nor  the  "  Lord's  Prayer,"  those  typical  embodi- 
ments, according  to  Dr.  Wace,  of  the  "  essential  belief  and 
cardinal  teaching  "  of  Jesus  ?  Not  only  does  "  Mark's  "  gos- 
pel fail  to  contain  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  or  anything 
but  a  very  few  of  the  sayings  contained  in  that  collection ; 
but,  at  the  point  of  the  history  of  Jesus  where  the  "  Sermon  " 
occurs  in  "  Matthew,"  there  is  in  "  Mark "  an  apparently 
unbroken  narrative  from  the  calling  of  James  and  John  to 
the  healing  of  Simon's  wife's  mother.  Thus  the  oldest  tra- 
dition not  only  ignores  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  but,  by 
implication,  raises  a  probability  against  its  being  delivered 
when  and  where  the  later  "  Matthew  "  inserts  it  in  his  com- 
pilation. 

And  still  more  weighty  is  the  fact  that  the  third  gospel, 
the  author  of  which  tells  ns  that  he  wrote  after  "many" 
others  had  "  taken  in  hand  "  the  same  enterprise ;  who  should 
therefore  have  known  the  first  gospel  (if  it  existed),  and  was 
bound  to  pay  to  it  the  deference  due  to  the  work  of  an  apos- 
tolic eye-witness  (if  he  had  any  reason  for  thinking  it  was 
so) — this  writer,  who  exhibits  far  more  literary  competence 
than  the  other  two,  ignores  any  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount," 
such  as  that  reported  by  "  Matthew,"  just  as  much  as  the 
oldest  authority  does.  Yet  "  Luke  "  has  a  great  many  pas- 
sages identical,  or  parallel,  with  those  in  "  Matthew's  "  "  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,"  which  are,  for  the  most  part,  scattered 
about  in  a  totally  different  connection. 

Interposed,  however,  between  the  nomination  of  the  Apos- 
tles and  a  visit  to  Capernaum ;  occupying,  therefore,  a  place 
which  answers  to  that  of  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount "  in  the 
first  gospel,  there  is,  in  the  third  gospel,  a  disconrse  which  is 
as  closely  similar  to  the  "Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  in  some 
particulars,  as  it  is  widely  unlike  it  in  others. 

This  discourse  is  said  to  have  been  delivered  in  a  "  plain  " 


326  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

or  "level  place "  (Luke  yi.  17),  and  by  way  of  distinction  we 
may  call  it  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Plain." 

I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  two  Evangelists  are 
dealing,  to  a  considerable  extent,  with  the  same  traditional 
material ;  and  a  comparison  of  the  two  "  Sermons  "  suggests 
very  strongly  that  "  Luke's  "  version  is  the  earlier.  The  cor- 
respondences between  the  two  forbid  the  notion  that  they 
are  independent.  They  both  begin  with  a  series  of  blessings, 
some  of  which  are  almost  verbally  identical.  In  the  middle 
of  each  (Luke  vi.  27-38,  Matt.  v.  43-48)  there  is  a  striking 
exposition  of  the  ethical  spirit  of  the  command  given  in 
Leviticus  xix.  18.  And  each  ends  with  a  passage  containing 
the  declaration  that  a  tree  is  to  be  known  by  its  fruit,  and 
the  parable  of  the  house  built  on  the  sand.  But  while  there 
are  only  29  verses  in  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Plain  "  there  are 
107  in  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount ; "  the  excess  in  length  of 
the  latter  being  chiefly  due  to  the  long  interpolations,  one  of 
30  verses  before  and  one  of  34  verses  after,  the  middlemost 
parallelism  with  Luke.  Under  these  circumstances  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  admit  that  there  is  more  probability  that 
"  Matthew's  "  version  of  the  Sermon  is  historically  accurate 
than  there  is  that  Luke's  version  is  so;  and  they  can  not 
both  be  accurate. 

"  Luke  "  either  knew  the  collection  of  loosely  connected 
and  aphoristic  utterances  which  appear  under  the  name  of 
the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount  "  in  "  Matthew  "  ;  or  he  did  not. 
If  he  did  not,  he  must  have  been  ignorant  of  the  existence 
of  such  a  document  as  our  canonical  "  Matthew,"  a  fact 
which  does  not  make  for  the  genuineness,  or  the  authority,  of 
that  book.  If  he  did,  he  has  shown  that  he  does  not  care  for' 
its  authority  on  a  matter  of  fact  of  no  small  importance ; 
and  that  does  not  permit  us  to  conceive  that  he  believed  the 
first  gospel  to  be  the  work  of  an  authority  to  whom  he  ought 
to  defer,  let  alone  that  of  an  apostolic  eye-witness. 

The  tradition  of  the  Church  about  the  second  gospel, 
which  I  believe  to  be  quite  worthless,  but  which  is  all  the  evi- 


AGNOSTICISM:   A   REJOINDER.  327 

dence  there  is  for  "  Mark's "  authorship,  would  have  us 
believe  that  "  Mark  "  was  little  more  than  the  mouthpiece  of 
the  apostle  Peter.  Consequently,  we  are  to  suppose  that 
Peter  either  did  not  know,  or  did  not  care  very  much  for, 
that  account  of  the  "  essential  belief  and  cardinal  teaching  " 
of  Jesus  which  is  contained  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount ; 
and,  certainly,  he  could  not  have  shared  Dr.  Wace's  view  of 
its  importance.* 

I  thought  that  all  fairly  attentive  and  intelligent  students 
of  the  gospels,  to  say  nothing  of  theologians  of  reputa- 
tion, knew  these  things.  But  how  can  any  one  who  does 
know  them  have  the  conscience  to  ask  whether  there  is  "  any 
reasonable  doubt"  that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  was 
preached  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ?  If  conjecture  is  permissible 
where  nothing  else  is  possible,  the  most  probable  conjecture 
seems  to  be  that  "  Matthew,"  having  a  cento  of  sayings  at- 
tributed— rightly  or  wrongly  it  is  impossible  to  say — to  Jesus, 
among  his  materials,  thought  they  were,  or  might  be,  records 
of  a  continuous  discourse,  and  put  them  in  at  the  place  he 
thought  likeliest.  Ancient  historians  of  the  highest  charac- 
ter saw  no  harm  in  composing  long  speeches  which  never 
were  spoken,  and  putting  them  into  the  mouths  of  statesmen 
and  warriors  ;  and  I  presume  that  whoever  is  represented  by 
"  Matthew  "  would  have  been  grievously  astonished  to  find 
that  any  one  objected  to  his  following  the  example  of  the 
best  models  accessible  to  him. 

So  with  the  "  Lord's  Prayer."  Absent  in  our  repre- 
sentative of  the  oldest  tradition,  it  appears  in  both   "  Mat- 

*  Holtzmann  {Die  synoptischen  Evangelien,  1863,  p.  75),  following 
Ewald,  argues  that  the  "  Source  A  "  (=the  threefold  tradition,  more  or 
less)  contained  something  that  answered  to  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Plain  " 
immediately  after  the  words  of  our  present  Mark,  "  And  he  cometh  into 
a  house  "  (iii.  19).  But  what  conceivable  motive  could  "  Mark  "  have  for 
omitting  it  ?  Holtzmann  has  no  doubt,  however,  that  the  "  Sermon  on 
the  Mount "  is  a  compilation,  or,  as  he  calls  it  in  his  recently  published 
Lehrbuch  (p.  372),  "  an  artificial  mosaic  work." 


328  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

thew  "  and  "  Luke."  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  every 
pious  Jew,  at  the  commencement  of  our  era,  prayed  three 
times  a  day,  according  to  a  formula  which  is  embodied  in  the 
present  Schmone-Esre  *  of  the  Jewish  prayer-book.  Jesus, 
who  was  assuredly,  in  all  respects,  a  pious  Jew,  whatever  else 
he  may  have  been,  doubtless  did  the  same.  Whether  he 
modified  the  current  formula,  or  whether  the  so-called  "  Lord's 
Prayer  "  is  the  prayer  substituted  for  the  Schmone-Esre  in 
the  congregations  of  the  Gentiles,  is  a  question  which  can 
hardly  be  answered. 

In  a  subsequent  passage  of  Dr.  Wace's  article  (p.  356)  he 
adds  to  the  list  of  the  verities  which  he  imagines  to  be  unas- 
sailable, "  The  Story  of  the  Passion."  I  am  not  quite  sure 
what  he  means  by  this.  I  am  not  aware  that  any  one  (with 
the  exception  of  certain  ancient  heretics)  has  propounded 
doubts  as  to  the  reality  of  the  crucifixion ;  and  certainly  I 
have  no  inclination  to  argue  about  the  precise  accuracy  of 
every  detail  of  that  pathetic  story  of  suffering  and  wrong. 
But,  if  Dr.  Wace  means,  as  I  suppose  he  does,  that  that  which, 
according  to  the  orthodox  view,  happened  after  the  cruci- 
fixion, and  which  is,  in  a  dogmatic  sense,  the  most  important 
part  of  the  story,  is  founded  on  solid  historical  proofs,  I  must 
beg  leave  to  express  a  diametrically  opposite  conviction. 

What  do  we  find  when  the  accounts  of  the  events  in 
question,  contained  in  the  three  Synoptic  gospels,  are  com- 
pared together  ?  In  the  oldest,  there  is  a  simple,  straight- 
forward statement  which,  for  anything  that  I  have  to  urge  to 
the  contrary,  may  be  exactly  true.  In  the  other  two,  there  is, 
round  this  possible  and  probable  nucleus,  a  mass  of  accretions 
of  the  most  questionable  character. 

The  cruelty  of  death  by  crucifixion  depended  very  much 
upon  its  lingering  character.  If  there  were  a  support  for  the 
weight  of  the  body,  as  not  unfrequently  was  the  practice,  the 

*  See  Schurer,  Geschichte  des  jiidischen  Volkes,  Zweiter  Theil,  p. 
384. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  329 

pain  during  the  first  hours  of  the  infliction  was  not,  neces- 
sarily, extreme ;  nor  need  any  serious  physical  symptoms,  at 
once,  arise  from  the  wounds  made  by  the  nails  in  the  hands 
and  feet,  supposing  they  were  nailed,  which  was  not  invari- 
ably the  case.  When  exhaustion  set  in,  and  hunger,  thirst, 
and  nervous  irritation  had  done  their  work,  the  agony  of  the 
sufferer  must  have  been  terrible  ;  and  the  more  terrible  that, 
in  the  absence  of  any  effectual  disturbance  of  the  machinery 
of  physical  life,  it  might  be  prolonged  for  many  hours,  or 
even  days.  Temperate,  strong  men,  such  as  were  the  ordi- 
nary Galilean  peasants,  might  live  for  several  days  on  the  cross. 
It  is  necessary  to  bear  these  facts  in  mind  when  we  read  the 
account  contained  in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  the  second 
gospel. 

Jesus  was  crucified  at  the  third  hour  (xv.  25),  and  the 
narrative  seems  to  imply  that  he  died  immediately  after  the 
ninth  hour  (v.  34).  In  this  case,  he  would  have  been  cruci- 
fied only  six  hours  ;  and  the  time  spent  on  the  cross  can  not 
have  been  much  longer,  because  Joseph  of  Arimathaea  must 
have  gone  to  Pilate,  made  his  preparations,  and  deposited  the 
body  in  the  rock-cut  tomb  before  sunset,  which,  at  that  time 
of  the  year,  was  about  the  twelfth  hour.  That  any  one 
should  die  after  only  six  hours'  crucifixion  could  not  have 
been  at  all  in  accordance  with  Pilate's  large  experience  of  the 
effects  of  that  method  of  punishment.  It,  therefore,  quite 
agrees  with  what  might  be  expected  if  Pilate  "  marveled  if  he 
were  already  dead  "  and  required  to  be  satisfied  on  this  point 
by  the  testimony  of  the  Roman  officer  who  was  in  command 
of  the  execution  party.  Those  who  have  paid  attention  to 
the  extraordinarily  difficult  question,  What  are  the  indisput- 
able signs  of  death  ? — will  be  able  to  estimate  the  value  of  the 
opinion  of  a  rough  soldier  on  such  a  subject ;  even  if  his  re- 
port to  the  Procurator  were  in  no  wise  affected  by  the  fact 
that  the  friend  of  Jesus,  who  anxiously  awaited  his  answer, 
was  a  man  of  influence  and  of  wealth. 

The  inanimate  body,  wrapped  in  linen,  was  deposited  in  a 
15 


330  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

spacious,*  cool,  rock  chamber  the  entrance  of  which  was 
closed,  not  by  a  well-fitting  door,  but  by  a  stone  rolled  against 
the  opening,  which  would  of  course  allow  free  passage  of  air. 
A  little  more  than  thirty-six  hours  afterward  (Friday  6  p.m., 
to  Sunday  6  a.m.,  or  a  little  after)  three  women  visit  the 
tomb  and  find  it  empty.  And  they  are  told  by  a  young  man 
"  arrayed  in  a  white  robe  "  that  Jesus  is  gone  to  his  native 
country  of  Galilee,  and  that  the  disciples  and  Peter  will  find 
him  there. 

Thus  it  stands,  plainly  recorded,  in  the  oldest  tradition 
that,  for  any  evidence  to  the  contrary,  the  sepulchre  may 
have  been  vacated  at  any  time  during  the  Friday  or  Saturday 
nights.  If  it  is  said  that  no  Jew  would  have  violated  the 
Sabbath  by  taking  the  former  course,  it  is  to  be  recollected 
that  Joseph  of  Arimathasa  might  well  be  familiar  with  that 
wise  and  liberal  interpretation  of  the  fourth  commandment, 
which  permitted  works  of  mercy  to  men — nay  even  the  draw- 
ing of  an  ox  or  an  ass  out  of  a  pit — on  the  Sabbath.  At  any 
rate,  the  Saturday  night  was  free  to  the  most  scrupulous  of 
observers  of  the  Law. 

These  are  the  facts  of  the  case  as  stated  by  the  oldest  ex- 
tant narrative  of  them.  I  do  not  see  why  any  one  should 
have  a  word  to  say  against  the  inherent  probability  of  that 
narrative  ;  and,  for  my  part,  I  am  quite  ready  to  accept  it  as 
an  historical  fact,  that  so  much  and  no  more  is  positively 
known  of  the  end  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  On  what  grounds 
can  a  reasonable  man  be  asked  to  believe  any  more  ?  So  far 
as  the  narrative  in  the  first  gospel,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
those  in  the  third  gospel  and  the  Acts,  on  the  other,  go  be- 
yond what  is  stated  in  the  second  gospel,  they  are  hopelessly 
discrepant  with  one  another.  And  this  is  the  more  signifi- 
cant because  the  pregnant  phrase  "  some  doubted,"  in  the 
first  gospel,  is  ignored  in  the  third. 

*  Spacious,  because  a  young  man  could  sit  in  it  "  on  the  right  side  " 
(xv.  5),  and  therefore  with  plenty  of  room  to  spare. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A   REJOINDER.  331 

But  it  is  said  that  we  have  the  witness  Paul  speaking  to 
us  directly  in  the  Epistles.  There  is  little  doubt  that  we 
have,  and  a  very  singular  witness  he  is.  According  to  his 
own  showing,  Paul,  in  the  vigor  of  his  manhood,  with  every 
means  of  becoming  acquainted,  at  first  hand,  with  the  evi- 
dence of  eye-witnesses,  not  merely  refused  to  credit  them,  but 
"  persecuted  the  church  of  God  and  made  havoc  of  it."  The 
reasoning  of  Stephen  fell  dead  upon  the  acute  intellect  of  this 
zealot  for  the  traditions  of  his  fathers :  his  eyes  were  blind 
to  the  ecstatic  illumination  of  the  martyr's  countenance  "  as 
it  had  been  the  face  of  an  angel ;  "  and  when,  at  the  words 
"  Behold,  I  see  the  heavens  opened  and  the  Son  of  Man 
standing  on  the  right  hand  of  God,"  the  murderous  mob 
rushed  upon  and  stoned  the  rapt  disciple  of  Jesus,  Paul 
ostentatiously  made  himself  their  official  accomplice. 

Yet  this  strange  man,  because  he  has  a  vision  one  day, 
at  once,  and  with  equally  headlong  zeal,  flies  to  the  opposite 
pole  of  opinion.  And  he  is  most  careful  to  tell  us  that  he 
abstained  from  any  re-examination  of  the  facts. 

Immediately  I  conferred  not  with  flesh  and  blood ;  neither 
went  I  up  to  Jerusalem  to  them  which  were  Apostles  before  me ; 
but  I  went  away  into  Arabia.     (Galatians  i.  16,  17.) 

I  do  not  presume  to  quarrel  with  Paul's  procedure.  If  it 
satisfied  him,  that  was  his  affair  ;  and,  if  it  satisfies  any  one 
else,  I  am  not  called  upon  to  dispute  the  right  of  that  person 
to  be  satisfied.  But  I  certainly  have  the  right  to  say  that  it 
would  not  satisfy  me,  in  like  case ;  that  I  should  be  very 
much  ashamed  to  pretend  that  it  could,  or  ought  to,  satisfy 
me  ;  and  that  I  can  entertain  but  a  very  low  estimate  of  the 
value  of  the  evidence  of  people  who  are  to  be  satisfied  in 
this  fashion,  when  questions  of  objective  fact,  in  which  their 
faith  is  interested,  are  concerned.  So  that  when  I  am  called 
upon  to  believe  a  great  deal  more  than  the  oldest  gospel  tells 
me  about  the  final  events  of  the  history  of  Jesus  on  the  au- 
thority of  Paul  (1  Corinthians  xv.  5-8)  I  must  pause.    Did 


332  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

he  think  it,  at  any  subsequent  time,  worth  while  "  to  confer 
with  flesh  and  blood,"  or,  in  modern  phrase,  to  re-examine 
the  facts  for  himself  ?  or  was  he  ready  to  accept  anything 
that  fitted  in  with  his  preconceived  ideas  ?  Does  he  mean, 
when  he  speaks  of  all  the  appearances  of  Jesus  after  the  cruci- 
fixion as  if  they  were  of  the  same  kind,  that  they  were  all 
visions,  like  the  manifestation  to  himself?  And, finally, how 
is  this  account  to  be  reconciled  with  those  in  the  first  and 
third  gospels — which,  as  we  have  seen,  disagree  with  one 
another  ? 

Until  these  questions  are  satisfactorily  answered,  I  am 
afraid  that,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  Paul's  testimony  can 
not  be  seriously  regarded,  except  as  it  may  afford  evidence  of 
the  state  of  traditional  opinion  at  the  time  at  which  he  wrote, 
say  between  55  and  60  A.  d.  ;  that  is,  more  than  twenty 
years  after  the  event ;  a  period  much  more  than  sufficient 
for  the  development  of  any  amount  of  mythology  about  mat- 
ters of  which  nothing  was  really  known.  A  few  years  later, 
among  the  contemporaries  and  neighbors  of  the  Jews,  and, 
if  the  most  probable  interpretation  of  the  Apocalypse  can 
be  trusted,  among  the  followers  of  Jesus  also,  it  was  fully 
believed,  in  spite  of  all  the  evidence  to  the  contrary,  that  the 
Emperor  Nero  was  not  really  dead,  but  that  he  was  hidden 
away  somewhere  in  the  East,  and  would  speedily  come  again 
at  the  head  of  a  great  army,  to  be  revenged  upon  his 
enemies.* 

Thus,  I  conceive  that  I  have  shown  cause  for  the  opinion 
that  Dr.  Wace's  challenge  touching  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  the  Passion  was  more  valorous  than 
discreet.  After  all  this  discussion,  I  am  still  at  the  agnostic 
point.  Tell  me,  first,  what  Jesus  can  be  proved  to  have  been, 
said,  and  done,  and  I  will  say  whether  I  believe  him,  or  in 

*  King  Herod  had  not  the  least  difficulty  in  supposing  the  resur- 
rection of  John  the  Baptist — "  John,  whom  I  beheaded,  he  is  risen  " 
(Mark  vi.  16). 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  333 

him,*  or  not.  As  Dr.  Wace  admits  that  I  have  dissipated 
his  lingering  shade  of  unbelief  about  the  bedevilment  of  the 
Gadarene  pigs,  he  might  have  done  something  to  help  mine. 
Instead  of  that,  he  manifests  a  total  want  of  conception  of 
the  nature  of  the  obstacles  which  impede  the  conversion  of 
his  "  infidels." 

The  truth  I  believe  to  be,  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  arriving  at  a  sure  conclusion  as  to  these  matters,  from  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  or  any  other  data 
offered  by  the  Synoptic  gospels  (and  a  fortiori  from  the 
fourth  gospel)  are  insuperable.  Every  one  of  these  records 
is  colored  by  the  prepossessions  of  those  among  whom  the 
primitive  traditions  arose,  and  of  those  by  whom  they  were 
collected  and  edited ;  and  the  difficulty  of  making  allowance 
for  these  prepossessions  is  enhanced  by  our  ignorance  of  the 
exact  dates  at  which  the  documents  were  first  put  together ; 
of  the  extent  to  which  they  have  been  subsequently  worked 
over  and  interpolated ;  and  of  the  historical  sense,  or  want 
of  sense,  and  the  dogmatic  tendencies  of  their  compilers  and 
editors.  Let  us  see  if  there  is  any  other  road  which  will  take 
us  into  something  better  than  negation. 

There  is  a  widespread  notion  that  the  "  primitive  Church," 
while  under  the  guidance  of  the  Apostles  and  their  immedi- 
ate successors,  was  a  sort  of  dogmatic  dovecote,  pervaded  by 
the  most  loving  unity  and  doctrinal  harmony.  Protestants, 
especially,  are  fond  of  attributing  to  themselves  the  merit  of 
being  nearer  "  the  Church  of  the  Apostles  "  than  their  neigh- 
bors ;  and  they  are  the  less  to  be  excused  for  their  strange 
delusion  because  they  are  great  readers  of  the  documents 

*  I  am  very  sorry  for  the  interpolated  "  in,"  because  citation  ought 
to  be  accurate  in  small  things  as  in  great.  But  what  difference  it 
makes  whether  one  "  believes  Jesus "  or  "  believes  in  Jesus "  much 
thought  has  not  enabled  me  to  discover.  If  you  "  believe  him  "  you 
must  believe  him  to  be  what  he  professed  to  be — that  is,  "  believe  in 
him ; "  and  if  you  "  believe  in  him "  you  must  necessarily  "  believe 
him." 


334  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

which  prove  the  exact  contrary.  The  fact  is  that,  in  the 
course  of  the  first  three  centuries  of  its  existence,  the  Church 
rapidly  underwent  a  process  of  evolution  of  the  most  remark- 
able character,  the  final  stage  of  which  is  far  more  different 
from  the  first  than  Anglicanism  is  from  Quakerism.  The 
key  to  the  comprehension  of  the  problem  of  the  origin  of 
that  which  is  now  called  "  Christianity,"  and  its  relation  to 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  lies  here.  Nor  can  we  arrive  at  any  sound 
conclusion  as  to  what  it  is  probable  that  Jesus  actually  said 
and  did  without  being  clear  on  this  head.  By  far  the  most 
important  and  subsequently  influential  steps  in  the  evolution 
of  Christianity  took  place  in  the  course  of  the  century,  more 
or  less,  which  followed  upon  the  crucifixion.  It  is  almost  the 
darkest  period  of  Church  history,  but,  most  fortunately,  the 
beginning  and  the  end  of  the  period  are  brightly  illuminated 
by  the  contemporary  evidence  of  two  writers  of  whose  his- 
torical existence  there  is  no  doubt,*  and  against  the  genuine- 
ness of  whose  most  important  works  there  is  no  widely  ad- 
mitted objection.  These  are  Justin,  the  philosopher  and 
martyr,  and  Paul,  the  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  I  shall  call 
upon  these  witnesses  only  to  testify  to  the  condition  of  opin- 
ion among  those  who  called  themselves  disciples  of  Jesus  in 
their  time. 

Justin,  in  his  Dialogue  with  Trypho  the  Jew,  which  was 
written  somewhere  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
enumerates  certain  categories  of  persons  who,  in  his  opinion, 
will,  or  will  not,  be  saved. f     These  are  : — 

1.  Orthodox  Jews  who  refuse  to  believe  that  Jesus  is  the 
Christ.     Not  saved. 

2.  Jews  who  observe  the  Law;  believe  Jesus  to  be  the' 

*  True  for  Justin :  but  there  is  a  school  of  theological  critics,  who 
more  or  less  question  the  historical  reality  of  Paul  and  the  genuineness 
of  even  the  four  cardinal  epistles. 

f  See  Dial,  cum  Tryphone,  §  47  and  §  35.  It  is  to  be  understood 
that  Justin  does  not  arrange  these  categories  in  order,  as  I  have 
done. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A   REJOINDER.  335 

Christ ;  but  who  insist  on  the  observance  of  the  Law  by  Gen- 
tile converts.     Not  saved. 

3.  Jews  who  observe  the  Law;  believe  Jesus  to  be  the 
Christ,  and  hold  that  Gentile  converts  need  not  observe  the 
Law.  Saved  (in  Justin's  opinion ;  but  some  of  his  fellow- 
Christians  think  the  contrary). 

4.  Gentile  converts  to  the  belief  in  Jesus  as  the  Christ, 
who  observe  the  Law.     Saved  (possibly). 

5.  Gentile  believers  in  Jesus  as  the  Christ,  who  do  not 
observe  the  Law  themselves  (except  so  far  as  the  refusal  of 
idol  sacrifices),  but  do  not  consider  those  who  do  observe  it 
heretics.     Saved  (this  is  Justin's  own  view). 

6.  Gentile  believers  who  do  not  observe  the  Law,  except 
in  refusing  idol  sacrifices,  and  hold  those  who  do  observe  it 
to  be  heretics.     Saved. 

7.  Gentiles  who  believe  Jesus  to  be  the  Christ  and  call 
themselves  Christians,  but  who  eat  meats  sacrificed  to  idols. 
Not  saved. 

8.  Gentiles  who  disbelieve  in  Jesus  as  the  Christ.  Not 
saved. 

Justin  does  not  consider  Christians  who  believe  in  the 
natural  birth  of  Jesus,  of  whom  he  implies  that  there  is  a  re- 
spectable minority,  to  be  heretics,  though  he  himself  strongly 
hold  the  preternatural  birth  of  Jesus  and  his  pre-existence  as 
the  "  Logos  "  or  "  Word."  He  conceives  the  Logos  to  be  a 
second  God,  inferior  to  the  first,  unknowable,  God,  with  re- 
spect to  whom  Justin,  like  Philo,  is  a  complete  agnostic. 
The  Holy  Spirit  is  not  regarded  by  Justin  as  a  separate  per- 
sonality, and  is  often  mixed  up  with  the  "  Logos."  The  doc- 
trine of  the  natural  immortality  of  the  soul  is,  for  Justin,  a 
heresy ;  and  he  is  as  firm  a  believer  in  the  resurrection  of  the 
body,  as  in  the  speedy  Second  Coming  and  establishment  of 
the  millennium. 

This  pillar  of  the  Church  in  the  middle  of  the  second 
century — a  much-traveled  native  of  Samaria — was  certainly 
well  acquainted  with  Kome,  probably  with  Alexandria,  and 


336  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

it  is  likely  that  lie  knew  the  state  of  opinion  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  Christian  world  as  well  as  any  man 
of  his  time.  If  the  various  categories  above  enumerated  are 
arranged  in  a  series  thus  : — 

Justin's  Christianity. 


Orthodox       Judceo- Christianity.  Idolothytic 

Judaism.     - -~- Christianity.   Paganism. 

I.       II.       III.       IV.       V.       VI.       VII.       VIII. 

it  is  obvious  that  they  form  a  gradational  series  from  ortho- 
dox Judaism,  on  the  extreme  left,  to  Paganism,  whether  philo- 
sophic or  popular,  on  the  extreme  right ;  and  it  will  further 
be  observed  that,  while  Justin's  conception  of  Christianity  is 
very  broad,  he  rigorously  excludes  two  classes  of  persons  who, 
in  his  time,  called  themselves  Christians ;  namely,  those  who 
insist  on  circumcision  and  other  observances  of  the  Law  on 
the  part  of  Jentile  converts ;  that  is  to  say,  the  strict  Judaso- 
Christians  (II.) ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  those  who  assert 
the  lawfulness  of  eating  meat  offered  to  idols — whether  they 
are  Gnostic  or  not  (VII.).  These  last  I  have  called  "idolo- 
thytic "  Christians,  because  I  can  not  devise  a  better  name, 
not  because  it  is  strictly  defensible  etymologically. 

At  the  present  moment,  I  do  not  suppose  there  is  an 
English  missionary  in  any  heathen  land  who  would  trouble 
himself  whether  the  materials  of  his  dinner  had  been  pre- 
viously offered  to  idols  or  not.  On  the  other  hand,  I  suppose 
there  is  no  Protestant  sect  within  the  pale  of  orthodoxy,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  Eoman  and  Greek  Churches,  which  would 
hesitate  to  declare  the  practice  of  circumcision  and  the  ob- 
servance of  the  Jewish  Sabbath  and  dietary  rules,  shockingly 
heretical. 

Modern  Christianity  has,  in  fact,  not  only  shifted  far  to 
the  right  of  Justin's  position,  but  it  is  of  much  narrower 
compass. 

Justin. 


Judato- Christianity.                            Modern  Christianity.  Paganism. 
Judaism. -~- -  ^ : — -     | 

I.       II.    *  III.       IV.       V.      VI.       VII.       VIII. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  337 

For,  though  it  includes  VII.,  and  even,  in  saint  and  relic 
worship,  cuts  a  "  monstrous  cantle  "  out  of  paganism,  it  ex- 
cludes, not  only  all  Judaeo-Christians,  but  all  who  doubt  that 
such  are  heretics.  Ever  since  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
Inquisition  would  have  cheerfully  burned,  and  in  Spain  did 
abundantly  burn,  all  persons  who  came  under  the  categories 
IL,  III.,  IV.,  V.  And  the  wolf  would  play  the  same  havoc 
now,  if  it  could  only  get  its  blood-stained  jaws  free  from  the 
muzzle  imposed  by  the  secular  arm. 

Further,  there  is  not  a  Protestant  body  except  the  Uni- 
tarian, which  would  not  declare  Justin  himself  a  heretic,  on 
account  of  his  doctrine  of  the  inferior  godship  of  the  Logos ; 
while  I  am  very  much  afraid  that,  in  strict  logic,  Dr.  Wace 
would  be  under  the  necessity,  so  painful  to  him,  of  calling 
him  an  "  infidel,"  oil  the  same  and  on  other  grounds. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  our  other  authority.  If  there  is  any 
result  of  critical  investigations  of  these  sources  of  Christianity 
which  is  certain,*  it  is  that  Paul  of  Tarsus  wrote  the  Epistle 
to  the  Galatians  somewhere  between  the  years  55  and  60 
A.  d.,  that  is  to  say,  roughly,  twenty,  or  five-and-twenty  years 
after  the  crucifixion.  If  this  is  so,  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  is  one  of  the  oldest,  if  not  the  very  oldest,  of 
extant  documentary  evidences  of  the  state  of  the  primitive 
Church.  And,  be  it  observed,  if  it  is  Paul's  writing,  it  un- 
questionably furnishes  us  with  the  evidence  of  a  participator 
in  the  transactions  narrated.  With  the  exception  of  two  or 
three  of  the  other  Pauline  epistles,  there  is  not  one  solitary 
book  in  the  New  Testament  of  the  authorship  and  authority 
of  which  we  have  such  good  evidence. 

And  what  is  the  state  of  things  we  find  disclosed  ?  A 
bitter  quarrel,  in  his  account  of  which  Paul  by  no  means 
minces  matters,  or  hesitates  to  hurl  defiant  sarcasms  against 
those  who  were  "  reputed  to  be  pillars  : "  James  "  the  brother 

*  I  guard  myself  against  being  supposed  to  affirm  that  even  the 
four  cardinal  epistles  of  Paul  may  not  have  been  seriously  tampered 
with.    See  note  10  above. 
16 


338  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  the  Lord,"  Peter,  the  rock  on  whom  Jesus  is  said  to  have 
built  his  Church,  and  John, "the  beloved  disciple."  And  no 
deference  toward  "  the  rock  "  withholds  Paul  from  charging 
Peter  to  his  face  with  "  dissimulation." 

The  subject  of  the  hot  dispute  was  simply  this.  "Were 
Gentile  converts  bound  to  obey  the  Law  or  not?  Paul 
answered  in  the  negative ;  and,  acting  upon  his  opinion,  had 
created  at  Antioch  (and  elsewhere)  a  specifically  "  Christian  " 
community,  the  sole  qualifications  for  admission  into  which 
were  the  confession  of  the  belief  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah, 
and  baptism  upon  that  confession.  In  the  epistle  in  question, 
Paul  puts  this — his  "  gospel,"  as  he  calls  it — in  its  most  ex- 
treme form.  Not  only  does  he  deny  the  necessity  of  con- 
formity with  the  Law,  but  he  declares  such  conformity  to 
have  a  negative  value.  "  Behold,  I,  Paul,  say  unto  you,  that 
if  ye  receive  circumcision,  Christ  will  profit  you  nothing  " 
(Gaiatians  v.  2).  He  calls  the  legal  observances  "  beggarly 
rudiments,"  and  anathematizes  every  one  who  preaches  to  the 
Gaiatians  any  other  gospel  than  his  own.  That  is  to  say,  by 
direct  consequence,  he  anathematizes  the  Nazarenes  of 
Jerusalem,  whose  zeal  for  the  Law  is  testified  by  James  in  a 
passage  of  the  Acts  cited  further  on.  In  the  first  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians,  dealing  with  the  question  of  eating  meat 
offered  to  idols,  it  is  clear  that  Paul  himself  thinks  it  a 
matter  of  indifference ;  but  he  advises  that  it  should  not  be 
done,  for  the  sake  of  the  weaker  brethren.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Nazarenes  of  Jerusalem  most  strenuously  opposed 
Paul's  "  gospel,"  insisting  on  every  convert  becoming  a 
regular  Jewish  proselyte,  and  consequently  on  his  observance 
of  the  whole  Law;  and  this  party  was  led  by  James  and' 
Peter  and  John  (Gaiatians  ii.  9).  Paul  does  not  suggest  that 
the  question  of  principle  was  settled  by  the  discussion  referred 
to  in  Gaiatians.  All  he  says  is  that  it  ended  in  the  practical 
agreement  that  he  and  Barnabas  should  do  as  they  had  been 
doing,  in  respect  to  the  Gentiles ;  while  James  and  Peter  and 
John  should  deal  in  their  own  fashion  with  Jewish  converts. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  339 

Afterward,  he  complains  bitterly  of  Peter,  because,  when  on 
a  visit  to  Antioch,  he  at  first  inclined  to  Paul's  view,  and  ate 
with  the  Gentile  converts ;  but  when  "  certain  came  from 
James,"  "  drew  back,  and  separated  himself,  fearing  them 
that  were  of  the  circumcision.  And  the  rest  of  the  Jews 
dissembled  likewise  with  him  ;  insomuch  that  even  Barnabas 
was  carried  away  with  their  dissimulation  "  (Galatians  ii. 
12-13). 

There  is  but  one  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  Paul's  ac- 
count of  this  famous  dispute,  the  settlement  of  which  deter- 
mined the  fortunes  of  the  nascent  religion.  It  is  that  the 
disciples  at  Jerusalem,  headed  by  "James,  the  Lord's 
brother,"  and  by  the  leading  apostles,  Peter  and  John,  were 
strict  Jews,  who  had  objected  to  admit  any  converts  into 
their  body,  unless  these,  either  by  birth,  or  by  becoming  pros- 
elytes, were  also  strict  Jews.  In  fact,  the  sole  difference  be- 
tween James  and  Peter  and  John,  with  the  body  of  the  dis- 
ciples whom  they  led,  and  the  Jews  by  whom  they  were  sur- 
rounded, and  with  whom  they  for  many  years  shared  the  re- 
ligious observances  of  the  Temple,  was  that  they  believed  that 
the  Messiah,  whom  the  leaders  of  the  nation  yet  looked  for 
had  already  come  in  the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

The  Acts  of  the  Apostles  is  hardly  a  very  trustworthy  his- 
tory ;  it  is  certainly  of  later  date  than  the  Pauline  Epistles, 
supposing  them  to  be  genuine.  And  the  writer's  version  of 
the  conference  of  which  Paul  gives  so  graphic  a  description, 
if  that  is  correct,  is  unmistakably  colored  with  all  the  art  of 
a  reconciler,  anxious  to  cover  up  a  scandal.  But  it  is  none 
the  less  instructive  on  this  account.  The  judgment  of  the 
"  council  "  delivered  by  James  is  that  the  Gentile  converts 
shall  merely  "abstain  from  things  sacrificed  to  idols,  and 
from  blood  and  from  things  strangled,  and  from  f ornification." 
But  notwithstanding  the  accommodation  in  which  the  writer 
of  the  Acts  would  have  us  believe,  the  Jerusalem  Church  held 
to  its  endeavor  to  retain  the  observance  of  the  Law.  Long 
after  the  conference,  some  time  after  the  writing  of  the 


340  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Epistles  to  the  Galatians  and  Corinthians,  and  immediately 
after  the  dispatch  of  that  to  the  Eomans,  Paul  makes  his  last 
visit  to  Jerusalem,  and  presents  himself  to  James  and  all 
the  elders.  And  this  is  what  the  Acts  tells  us  of  the  inter- 
view : — 

And  they  said  unto  him,  Thou  seest,  brother,  how  many 
thousands  [or  myriads]  there  are  among  the  Jews  of  them  which 
have  believed ;  and  they  are  all  zealous  for  the  law ;  and  they 
have  been  informed  concerning  thee,  that  thou  teachest  all  the 
Jews  which  are  among  the  Gentiles  to  forsake  Moses,  telling 
them  not  to  circumcise  their  children,  neither  to  walk  after  the 
customs.     (Acts  xxi.  20,  21). 

They  therefore  request  that  he  should  perform  a  certain  pub- 
lic religious  act  in  the  Temple,  in  order  that 

all  shall  know  that  there  is  no  truth  in  the  things  whereof  they 
have  been  informed  concerning  thee;  but  that  thou  thyself 
walkest  orderly,  keeping  the  law  (ibid.  24.)* 

How  far  Paul  could  do  what  he  is  here  requested  to  do, 
and  which  the  writer  of  the  Acts  goes  on  to  say  he  did,  with 
a  clear  conscience,  if  he  wrote  the  epistles  to  the  Galatians 
and  Corinthians,  I  may  leave  any  candid  reader  of  these 
epistles  to  decide.  The  point  to  which  I  wish  to  direct  at- 
tention is  the  declaration  that  the  Jerusalem  Church,  led  by 
the  brother  of  Jesus  and  by  his  personal  disciples  and  friends, 
twenty  years  and  more  after  his  death,  consisted  of  strict  and 
zealous  Jews. 

Tertullus,  the  orator,  caring  very  little  about  the  internal 
dissensions  of  the  followers  of  Jesus,  speaks  of  Paul  as  a 
"ringleader  of  the  sect  of  the  Nazarenes "  (Acts  xxiv.  5), 
which  must  have  affected  James  much  in  the  same  way  as  it 
would  have  moved  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  George 

*  [Paul,  in  fact,  is  required  to  commit  in  Jerusalem,  an  act  of  the 
same  character  as  that  which  he  brands  as  "  dissimulation  "  on  the  part 
of  Peter  in  Antioch.] 


AGNOSTICISM:   A   REJOINDER.  341 

Fox's  day,  to  hear  the  latter  called  a  "  ringleader  of  the  sect 
of  Anglicans."  In  fact,  "  Nazarene  "  was,  as  is  well  known, 
the  distinctive  appellation  applied  to  Jesus ;  his  immediate 
followers  were  known  as  Nazarenes ;  while  the  congregation 
of  the  disciples,  and,  later,  of  converts  at  Jerusalem — the 
Jerusalem  Church — was  emphatically  the  "  sect  of  the  Naza- 
renes,"  no  more  in  itself  to  be  regarded  as  anything  outside 
Judaism  than  the  sect  of  the  Saddncees  or  of  the  Essenes.* 
In  fact,  the  tenets  of  both  the  Sadducees  and  the  Essenes 
diverged  much  more  widely  from  the  Pharisaic  standard  of 
orthodoxy  than  Nazarenism  did. 

Let  us  consider  the  position  of  affairs  now  (a.d.  50-60)  in 
relation  to  that  which  obtained  in  Justin's  time,  a  century 
later.  It  is  plain  that  the  Nazarenes — presided  over  by 
James  "  the  brother  of  the  Lord,"  and  comprising  within 
their  body  all  the  twelve  apostles — belonged  to  Justin's  sec- 
ond category  of  "  Jews  who  observe  the  Law,  believe  Jesus  to 
be  the  Christ,  but  who  insist  on  the  observance  of  the  Law 
by  Gentile  converts,"  up  till  the  time  at  which  the  controversy 
reported  by  Paul  arose.  They  then,  according  to  Paul, 
simply  allowed  him  to  form  his  congregations  of  non-legal 
Gentile  converts  at  Antioch  and  elsewhere ;  and  it  would 
seem  that  it  was  to  these  converts,  who  would  come  under 
Justin's  fifth  category,  that  the  title  of  "  Christian  "  was  first 
applied.  If  any  of  these  Christians  had  acted  upon  the  more 
than  half-permission  given  by  Paul,  and  had  eaten  meats 
offered  to  idols,  they  would  have  belonged  to  Justin's  seventh 
category. 

Hence,  it  appears  that,  if  Justin's  opinion,  which  was 
probably  that  of  the  Church  generally  in  the  middle  of  the 
second  century,  was  correct,  James  and  Peter  and  John  and 
their  followers  could  not  be  saved;  neither  could  Paul, 
if  he  carried  into  practice  his  views  as  to  the  indifference  of 


*  All  this  was  quite  clearly  pointed  out  by  Ritschl  nearly  forty  years 
ago.    See  Die  Entstehung  der  alt-katJiolischen  Kirche  (1850),  p.  108. 


342  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

eating  meats  offered  to  idols.  Or,  to  put  the  matter  another 
way,  the  center  of  gravity  of  orthodoxy,  which  is  at  the  ex- 
treme right  of  the  series  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  at 
the  extreme  left,  just  before  the  middle  of  the  first  century, 
when  the  "  sect  of  the  [Nazarenes "  constituted  the  whole 
church  founded  by  Jesus  and  the  apostles ;  while,  in  the  time 
of  Justin,  it  lay  midway  between  the  two.  It  is  therefore  a 
profound  mistake  to  imagine  that  the  Judseo-Christians 
(Nazarenes  and  Ebionites)  of  later  times  were  heretical  out- 
growths from  a  primitive  universalist  "  Christianity."  On 
the  contrary,  the  universalist  "  Christianity  "  is  an  outgrowth 
from  the  primitive,  purely  Jewish,  Nazarenism;  which, 
gradually  eliminating  all  the  ceremonial  and  dietary  parts  of 
the  Jewish  law,  has  thrust  aside  its  parent,  and  all  the  inter- 
mediate stages  of  its  development,  into  the  position  of  damn- 
able heresies. 

Such  being  the  case,  we  are  in  a  position  to  form  a  safe 
judgment  of  the  limits  within  which  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  must  have  been  confined.  Ecclesiastical  author- 
ity would  have  us  believe  that  the  words  which  are  given  at 
the  end  of  the  first  Gospel,  "  Go  ye,  therefore,  and  make  dis- 
ciples of  all  the  nations,  baptizing  them  in  the  name  of  the 
Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,"  are  part  of 
the  last  commands  of  Jesus,  issued  at  the  moment  of  his 
parting  with  the  eleven.  If  so,  Peter  and  John  must  have 
heard  these  words ;  they  are  too  plain  to  be  misunderstood ; 
and  the  occasion  is  too  solemn  for  them  ever  to  be  forgotten. 
Yet  the  "  Acts  "  tell  us  that  Peter  needed  a  vision  to  enable 
him  so  much  as  to  baptize  Cornelius  ;  and  Paul,  in  the  Gala- 
tians,  knows  nothing  of  words  which  would  have  completely 
borne  him  out  as  against  those  who,  though  they  heard,  must 
be  supposed  to  have  either  forgotten  or  ignored  them.  On 
the  other  hand,  Peter  and  John,  who  are  supposed  to  have 
heard  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  know  nothing  of  the 
saying  that  Jesus  had  not  come  to  destroy  the  Law,  but  that 
every  jot  and  tittle  of  the  Law  must  be  fulfilled,  which  sure- 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  343 

ly  would  have  been  pretty  good  evidence  for  their  view  of  the 
question. 

We  are  sometimes  told  that  the  personal  friends  and  daily 
companions  of  Jesus  remained  zealous  Jews  and  opposed 
Paul's  innovations,  because  they  were  hard  of  heart  and  dull 
of  comprehension.  This  hypothesis  is  hardly  in  accordance 
with  the  concomitant  faith  of  those  who  adopt  it,  in  the 
miraculous  insight  and  superhuman  sagacity  of  their  Mas- 
ter ;  nor  do  I  see  any  way  of  getting  it  to  harmonize  with 
the  orthodox  postulate ;  namely,  that  Matthew  was  the  author 
of  the  first  gospel  and  John  of  the  fourth.  If  that  is  so, 
then,  most  assuredly,  Matthew  was  no  dullard;  and  as  for 
the  fourth  gospel — a  theosophic  romance  of  the  first  order — 
it  could  have  been  written  by  none  but  a  man  of  remarkable 
literary  capacity,  who  had  drunk  deep  of  Alexandrian  philos- 
ophy. Moreover,  the  doctrine  of  the  writer  of  the  fourth 
gospel  is  more  remote  from  that  of  the  "  sect  of  the  Naza- 
renes  "  than  is  that  of  Paul  himself.  I  am  quite  aware  that 
orthodox  critics  have  been  capable  of  maintaining  that  John, 
the  Nazarene,  who  was  probably  well  past  fifty  years  of  age 
when  he  is  supposed  to  have  written  the  most  thoroughly 
Judaizing  book  in  the  New  Testament — the  Apocalypse — 
in  the  roughest  of  Greek,  underwent  an  astounding  meta- 
morphosis of  both  doctrine  and  style  by  the  time  he  reached 
the  ripe  age  of  ninety  or  so,  and  provided  the  world  with  a 
history  in  which  the  acutest  critic  can  not  [always]  make  out 
where  the  speeches  of  Jesus  end  and  the  text  of  the  narrative 
begins ;  while  that  narrative  is  utterly  irreconcilable,  in  regard 
to  matters  of  fact,  with  that  of  his  fellow-apostle,  Matthew. 

The  end  of  the  whole  matter  is  this : — The  "  sect  of  the 
Nazarenes,"  the  brother  and  the  immediate  followers  of 
Jesus,  commissioned  by  him  as  apostles,  and  those  who  were 
taught  by  them  up  to  the  year  50  A.  d.,  were  not  "  Chris- 
tians "  in  the  sense  in  which  that  term  has  been  understood 
ever  since  its  asserted  origin  at  Antioch,  but  Jews — strict 
orthodox  Jews — whose  belief  in  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus 


344  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

never  led  to  their  exclusion  from  the  Temple  services,  nor 
would  have  shut  them  out  from  the  wide  embrace  of  Juda- 
ism.* The  open  proclamation  of  their  special  view  about  the 
Messiah  was  undoubtedly  offensive  to  the  Pharisees,  just  as 
rampant  Low  Churchism  is  offensive  to  bigoted  High  Church- 
ism  in  our  own  country ;  or  as  any  kind  of  dissent  is  offensive 
to  fervid  religionists  of  all  creeds.  To  the  Sadducees,  no 
doubt,  the  political  danger  of  any  Messianic  movement  was 
serious  ;  and  they  would  have  been  glad  to  put  down  Naza- 
renism  lest  it  should  end  in  useless  rebellion  against  their 
Eoman  masters,  like  that  other  Galilean  movement  headed 
by  Judas,  a  generation  earlier.  Galilee  was  always  a  hotbed 
of  seditious  enthusiasm  against  the  rule  of  Eome ;  and  high 
priest  and  procurator  alike  had  need  to  keep  a  sharp  eye 
upon  natives  of  that  district.  On  the  whole,  however,  the 
ISTazarenes  were  but  little  troubled  for  the  first  twenty  years 
of  their  existence ;  and  the  undying  hatred  of  the  Jews 
against  those  later  converts,  whom  they  regarded  as  apostates 
and  fautors  of  a  sham  Judaism,  was  awakened  by  Paul. 
From  their  point  of  view,  he  was  a  mere  renegade  Jew,  op- 
posed alike  to  orthodox  Judaism  and  to  orthodox  Nazaren- 
ism,  and  whose  teachings  threatened  Judaism  with  destruc- 
tion. And,  from  their  point  of  view,  they  were  quite  right. 
In  the  course  of  a  century,  Pauline  influences  had  a  large 
share  in  driving  primitive  Nazarenism  from  being  the  very 
heart  of  the  new  faith  into  the  position  of  scouted  error ; 
and  the  spirit  of  Paul's  doctrine  continued  its  work  of  driv- 
ing Christianity  farther  and  farther  away  from  Judaism,  un- 
til "  meats  offered  to  idols  "  might  be  eaten  without  scruple, 
while  the  Nazarene  methods  of  observing  even  the  Sabbath,  or 
the  Passover,  were  branded  with  the  mark  of  Judaizing  heresy. 
But  if  the  primitive  Nazarenes  of  whom  the  Acts  speaks 
were  orthodox  Jews,  what  sort  of  probability  can  there  be 

*  "  If  every  one  was  baptized  as  soon  as  he  acknowledged  Jesus  to 
be  the  Messiah,  the  first  Christians  can  have  been  aware  of  no  other  es- 
sential differences  from  the  Jews." — Zeller,  Vortrage  (1865),  p.  26. 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  345 

that  Jesus  was  anything  else?  How  can  he  have  founded 
the  universal  religion  which  was  not  heard  of  till  twenty 
years  after  his  death  ?  *  That  Jesus  possessed  in  a  rare  de- 
gree the  gift  of  attaching  men  to  his  person  and  to  his  for- 
tunes ;  that  he  was  the  author  of  many  a  striking  saying,  and 
the  advocate  of  equity,  of  love,  and  of  humility ;  that  he  may 
have  disregarded  the  subtleties  of  the  bigots  for  legal  observ- 
ance, and  appealed  rather  to  those  noble  conceptions  of  re- 
ligion which  constituted  the  pith  and  kernel  of  the  teaching 
of  the  great  prophets  of  his  nation  seven  hundred  years 
earlier ;  and  that,  in  the  last  scenes  of  his  career,  he  may 
have  embodied  the  ideal  sufferer  of  Isaiah,  may  be,  as  I  think 
it  is,  extremely  probable.  But  all  this  involves  not  a  step 
beyond  the  borders  of  orthodox  Judaism.  Again,  who  is  to 
say  whether  Jesus  proclaimed  himself  the  veritable  Messiah, 
expected  by  his  nation  since  the  appearance  of  the  pseudo- 
prophetic  work  of  Daniel,  a  century  and  a  half  before  his 
time ;  or  whether  the  enthusiasm  of  his  followers  gradually 
forced  him  to  assume  that  position  ? 

But  one  thing  is  quite  certain  :  if  that  belief  in  the  speedy 
second  coming  of  the  Messiah  which  was  shared  by  all  parties 
in  the  primitive  Church,  whether  Nazarene  or  Pauline ;  which 
Jesus  is  made  to  prophesy,  over  and  over  again,  in  the  Syn- 
optic gospels;  and  which  dominated  the  life  of  Christians 
during  the  first  century  after  the  crucifixion ; — if  he  believed 
and  taught  that,  then  assuredly  he  was  under  an  illusion, 
and  he  is  responsible  for  that  which  the  mere  effluxion  of 
time  has  demonstrated  to  be  a  prodigious  error. 

When  I  ventured  to  doubt  "  whether  any  Protestant  the- 
ologian who  has  a  reputation  to  lose  will  say  that  he  believes 

*  Dr.  Harnack,  in  the  lately  published  second  edition  of  his  Dog- 
mengeschichte,  says  (p.  39),  "  Jesus  Christ  brought  forward  no  new  doc- 
trine " ;  and  again  (p.  65),  "  It  is  not  difficult  to  set  against  every  portion 
of  the  utterances  of  Jesus  an  observation  which  deprives  him  of  origi- 
nality."   See  also  Zusatz,  4,  on  the  same  page. 


346  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  Gadarene  story,"  it  appears  that  I  reckoned  without  Dr. 
Wace,  who,  referring  to  this  passage  in  my  paper,  says : — 

He  will  judge  whether  I  fall  under  his  description;  but  I 
repeat  that  I  believe  it,  and  that  he  has  removed  the  only  ob- 
jection to  my  believing  it  (p.  363). 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  set  myself  up  as  a  judge  of  any  such 
delicate  question  as  that  put  before  me ;  but  I  think  I  may 
venture  to  express  the  conviction  that,  in  the  matter  of  cour- 
age, Dr.  Wace  has  raised  for  himself  a  monument  cere  peren- 
nius.  For  really,  in  my  poor  judgment,  a  certain  splendid 
intrepidity,  such  as  one  admires  in  the  leader  of  a  forlorn 
hope,  is  manifested  by  Dr.  Wace  when  he  solemnly  affirms 
that  he  believes  the  Gadarene  story  on  the  evidence  offered. 
I  feel  less  complimented  perhaps  than  I  ought  to  do,  when  I 
am  told  that  I  have  been  an  accomplice  in  extinguishing  in 
Dr.  Wace's  mind  the  last  glimmer  of  doubt  which  common 
sense  may  have  suggested.  In  fact,  I  must  disclaim  all  re- 
sponsibility for  the  use  to  which  the  information  I  supplied 
has  been  put.  I  formally  decline  to  admit  that  the  expres- 
sion of  my  ignorance  whether  devils,  in  the  existence  of  which 
I  do  not  believe,  if  they  did  exist,  might  or  might  not  be 
made  to  go  out  of  men  into  pigs,  can,  as  a  matter  of  logic, 
have  been  of  any  use  whatever  to  a  person  who  already  be- 
lieved in  devils  and  in  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  gospels. 

Of  the  Gadarene  story,  Dr.  Wace,  with  all  solemnity  and 
twice  over,  affirms  that  he  "believes  it."  I  am  sorry  to 
trouble  him  further,  but  what  does  he  mean  by  "  it "  ?  Be- 
cause there  are  two  stories,  one  in  "  Mark  "  and  "  Luke,"  and 
the  other  in  "  Matthew."  In  the  former,  which  I  quoted  in 
my  previous  paper,  there  is  one  possessed  man ;  in  the  latter 
there  are  two.  The  story  is  told  fully,  with  the  vigorous 
homely  diction  and  the  picturesque  details  of  a  piece  of  folk- 
lore, in  the  second  gospel.  The  immediately  antecedent 
event  is  the  storm  on  the  Lake  of  Gennesareth.  The  imme- 
diately consequent  events  are  the  message  from  the  ruler  of 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  347 

the  synagogue  and  the  healing  of  the  woman  with  an  issue 
of  blood.  In  the  third  gospel,  the  order  of  events  is  exactly 
the  same,  and  there  is  an  extremely  close  general  and  verbal 
correspondence  between  the  narratives  of  the  miracle.  Both 
agree  in  stating  that  there  was  only  one  possessed  man,  and 
that  he  was  the  residence  of  many  devils,  whose  name  was 
"  Legion." 

In  the  first  gospel,  the  event  which  immediately  precedes 
the  Gadarene  affair  is,  as  before,  the  storm ;  the  message 
from  the  ruler  and  the  healing  of  the  issue  are  separated 
from  it  by  the  accounts  of  the  healing  of  a  paralytic,  of  the 
calling  of  Matthew,  and  of  a  discussion  with  some  Pharisees. 
Again,  while  the  second  gospel  speaks  of  the  country  of  the 
"  Gerasenes "  as  the  locality  of  the  event,  the  third  gospel 
has  "  Gerasenes,"  "  Gergesenes,"  and  "  Gadarenes  "  in  differ- 
ent ancient  MSS. ;  while  the  first  has  "  Gadarenes." 

The  really  important  points  to  be  noticed,  however,  in 
the  narrative  of  the  first  gospel,  are  these — that  there  are 
two  possessed  men  instead  of  one ;  and  that  while  the  story 
is  abbreviated  by  omissions,  what  there  is  of  it  is  often  ver- 
bally identical  with  the  corresponding  passages  in  the  other 
two  gospels.  The  most  unabashed  of  reconcilers  can  not 
well  say  that  one  man  is  the  same  as  two,  or  two  as  one ; 
and,  though  the  suggestion  really  has  been  made,  that  two 
different  miracles,  agreeing  in  all  essential  particulars,  except 
the  number  of  the  possessed,  were  effected  immediately  after 
the  storm  on  the  lake,  I  should  be  sorry  to  accuse  any  one  of 
seriously  adopting  it.  Nor  will  it  be  pretended  that  the  alle- 
gory refuge  is  accessible  in  this  particular  case. 

So,  when  Dr.  Wace  says  that  he  believes  in  the  synoptic 
evangelists'  account  of  the  miraculous  bedevilment  of  swine, 
I  may  fairly  ask  which  of  them  does  he  believe?  Does  he 
hold  by  the  one  evangelist's  story,  or  by  that  of  the  two  evan- 
gelists ?  And  having  made  his  election,  what  reasons  has  he 
to  give  for  his  choice  ?  If  it  is  suggested  that  the  witness  of 
two  is  to  be  taken  against  that  of  one,  not  only  is  the  testi- 


348  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

mony  dealt  with  in  that  common-sense  fashion  against  which 
the  theologians  of  his  school  protest  so  warmly ;  not  only  is 
all  question  of  inspiration  at  an  end,  but  the  further  inquiry 
arises,  After  all,  is  it  the  testimony  of  two  against  one  ?  Are 
the  authors  of  the  versions  in  the  second  and  the  third  gos- 
pels really  independent  witnesses  ?  In  order  to  answer  this 
question,  it  is  only  needful  to  place  the  English  versions  of 
the  two  side  by  side,  and  compare  them  carefully.  It  will 
then  be  seen  that  the  coincidences  between  them,  not  merely 
in  substance,  but  in  arrangement,  and  in  the  use  of  identical 
words  in  the  same  order,  are  such,  that  only  two  alternatives 
are  conceivable :  either  one  evangelist  freely  copied  from  the 
other,  or  both  based  themselves  upon  a  common  source, 
which  may  either  have  been  a  written  document,  or  a  defi- 
nite oral  tradition  learned  by  heart.  Assuredly,  these  two 
testimonies  are  not  those  of  independent  witnesses.  Further, 
when  the  narrative  in  the  first  gospel  is  compared  with  that 
in  the  other  two,  the  same  fact  comes  out. 

Supposing,  then,  that  Dr.  Wace  is  right  in  his  assumption 
that  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke  wrote  the  works  which  we 
find  attributed  to  them  by  tradition,  what  is  the  value  of  their 
agreement,  even  that  something  more  or  less  like  this  par- 
ticular miracle  occurred,  since  it  is  demonstrable,  either  that 
all  depend  on  some  antecedent  statement,  of  the  authorship 
of  which  nothing  is  known,  or  that  two  are  dependent  upon 
the  third? 

Dr.  Wace  says  he  believes  the  Gadarene  story ;  whichever 
version  of  it  he  accepts,  therefore,  he  believes  that  Jesus  said 
what  he  is  stated  in  all  the  versions  to  have  said,  and  thereby 
virtually  declared  that  the  theory  of  the  nature  of  the  spirit- 
ual world  involved  in  the  story  is  true.  Now  I  hold  that  this 
theory  is  false,  that  it  is  a  monstrous  and  mischievous  fiction ; 
and  I  unhesitatingly  express  my  disbelief  in  any  assertion 
that  it  is  true,  by  whomsoever  made.  So  that,  if  Dr.  Wace 
is  right  in  his  belief,  he  is  also  quite  right  in  classing  me 
among  the  people  he  calls  "  infidels  " ;  and  although  I  can 


AGNOSTICISM:   A  REJOINDER.  349 

not  fulfill  the  eccentric  expectation  that  I  shall  glory  in  a  title 
which,  from  my  point  of  view,  it  would  be  simply  silly  to 
adopt,  I  certainly  shall  rejoice  not  to  be  reckoned  among 
"  Christians  "  so  long  as  the  profession  of  belief  in  such  stories 
as  the  Gadarene  pig  affair,  on  the  strength  of  a  tradition  of 
unknown  origin,  of  which  two  discrepant  reports,  also  of  un- 
known origin,  alone  remain,  forms  any  part  of  the  Christian 
faith.  And,  although  I  have,  more  than  once,  repudiated  the 
gift  of  prophecy,  yet  I  think  I  may  venture  to  express  the  an- 
ticipation, that  if  "  Christians  "  generally  are  going  to  follow 
the  line  taken  by  Dr.  Wace,  it  will  not  be  long  before  all  men 
of  common-sense  qualify  for  a  place  among  the  "  infidels." 


XII. 
AGNOSTICISM   AND   CHRISTIANITY. 

Nemo  ergo  ex  me  scire  quaerat,  quod  me  nescire  scio,  nisi  forte  ut 
neseire  discat.  Augustinus,  Be  Civ.  Dei,  xii.  7. 

*  The  present  discussion  has  arisen  out  of  the  use,  which 
has  become  general  in  the  last  few  years,  of  the  terms  "  Ag- 
nostic "  and  "  Agnosticism." 

The  people  who  call  themselves  "  Agnostics  "  have  been 
charged  with  doing  so  because  they  have  not  the  courage  to 
declare  themselves  "  Infidels."  It  has  been  insinuated  that 
they  have  adopted  a  new  name  in  order  to  escape  the  un- 
pleasantness which  attaches  to  their  proper  denomination. 
To  this  wholly  erroneous  imputation,  I  have  replied  by  show- 
ing that  the  term  "  Agnostic  "  did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  arise 
in  a  manner  which  negatives  it ;  and  my  statement  has  not 
been,  and  can  not  be,  refuted.  Moreover,  speaking  for  my- 
self, and  without  impugning  the  right  of  any  other  person  to 
use  the  term  in  another  sense,  I  further  say  that  Agnosticism 
is  not  properly  described  as  a  "  negative  "  creed,  nor  indeed 
as  a  creed  of  any  kind,  except  in  so  far  as  it  expresses  abso- 
lute faith  in  the  validity  of  a  principle,  which  is  as  much 
ethical  as  intellectual.  This  principle  may  be  stated  in  vari-' 
ous  ways,  but  they  all  amount  to  this :  that  it  is  wrong  for  a 
man  to  say  that  he  is  certain  of  the  objective  truth  of  any 
proposition  unless  he  can  produce  evidence  which  logically 

*  The  substance  of  a  paragraph  which  precedes  this  has  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  Prologue. 


,     AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  351 

justifies  that  certainty.  This  is  what  Agnosticism  asserts; 
and,  in  my  opinion,  it  is  all  that  is  essential  to  Agnosticism. 
That  which  Agnostics  deny  and  repudiate,  as  immoral,  is  the 
contrary  doctrine,  that  there  are  propositions  which  men  ought 
to  believe,  without  logically  satisfactory  evidence ;  and  that 
reprobation  ought  to  attach  to  the  profession  of  disbelief  in 
such  inadequately  supported  propositions.  The  justification 
of  the  Agnostic  principle  lies  in  the  success  which  follows 
upon  its  application,  whether  in  the  field  of  natural,  or  in 
that  of  civil,  history ;  and  in  the  fact  that,  so  far  as  these 
topics  are  concerned,  no  sane  man  thinks  of  denying  its 
validity. 

Still  speaking  for  myself,  I  add,  that  though  Agnosticism 
is  not,  and  can  not  be,  a  creed,  except  in  so  far  as  its  general 
principle  is  concerned ;  yet  that  the  application  of  that  prin- 
ciple results  in  the  denial  of,  or  the  suspension  of  judgment 
concerning,  a  number  of  propositions  respecting  which  our 
contemporary  ecclesiastical  "  gnostics "  profess  entire  cer- 
tainty. And,  in  so  far  as  these  ecclesiastical  persons  can  be 
justified  in  their  old-established  custom  (which  many  nowa- 
days think  more  honored  in  the  breach  than  the  observance) 
of  using  opprobrious  names  to  those  who  differ  from  them,  I 
fully  admit  their  right  to  call  me  and  those  who  think  with 
me  "  Infidels : "  all  I  have  ventured  to  urge  is  that  they  must 
not  expect  us  to  speak  of  ourselves  by  that  title. 

The  extent  of  the  region  of  the  uncertain,  the  number 
of  the  problems  the  investigation  of  which  ends  in  a  verdict 
of  not  proven,  will  vary  according  to  the  knowledge  and  the 
intellectual  habits  of  the  individual  Agnostic.  I  do  not  very 
much  care  to  speak  of  anything  as  "  unknowable."  What  I  am 
sure  about  is  that  there  are  many  topics  about  which  I  know 
nothing  ;  and  which,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  are  out  of  reach  of 
my  faculties.  But  whether  these  things  are  knowable  by 
any  one  else  is  exactly  one  of  those  matters  which  is  beyond 
my  knowledge,  though  I  may  have  a  tolerably  strong  opinion 
as  to  the  probabilities  of  the  case.     Relatively  to  myself,  I 


352  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

am  quite  sure  that  the  region  of  uncertainty — the  nebulous 
country  in  which  words  play  the  part  of  realities — is  far 
more  extensive  than  I  could  wish.  Materialism  and  Ideal- 
ism ;  Theism  and  Atheism ;  the  doctrine  of  the  soul  and  its 
mortality  or  immortality — appear  in  the  history  of  philoso- 
phy like  the  shades  of  Scandinavian  heroes,  eternally  slaying 
one  another  and  eternally  coming  to  life  again  in  a  metaphys- 
ical "  Nifelheim."  It  is  getting  on  for  twenty-five  centuries, 
at  least,  since  mankind  began  seriously  to  give  their  minds  to 
these  topics.  Generation  after  generation,  philosophy  has  been 
doomed  to  roll  the  stone  uphill ;  and,  just  as  all  the  world  swore 
it  was  at  the  top,  down  it  has  rolled  to  the  bottom  again.  All 
this  is  written  in  innumerable  books ;  and  he  who  will  toil 
through  them  will  discover  that  the  stone  is  just  where  it 
was  when  the  work  began.  Hume  saw  this ;  Kant  saw  it ; 
since  their  time,  more  and  more  eyes  have  been  cleansed  of 
the  films  which  prevented  them  from  seeing  it ;  until  now 
the  weight  and  number  of  those  who  refuse  to  be  the  prey 
of  verbal  mystifications  has  begun  to  tell  in  practical  life. 

It  was  inevitable  that  a  conflict  should  arise  between 
Agnosticism  and  Theology ;  or  rather,  I  ought  to  say,  be- 
tween Agnosticism  and  Ecclesiaticism.  For  Theology,  the 
science,  is  one  thing ;  and  Ecclesiasticism,  the  championship 
of  a  foregone  conclusion*  as  to  the  truth  of  a  particular 
form  of  Theology,  is  another.  "With  scientific  Theology, 
Agnosticism  has  no  quarrel.  On  the  contrary,  the  Agnostic, 
knowing  too  well  the  influence  of  prejudice  and  idiosyn- 
crasy, even  on  those  who  desire  most  earnestly  to  be  impar- 
tial, can  wish  for  nothing  more  urgently  than  that  the 
scientific  theologian  should  not  only  be  at  perfect  liberty  to 
thrash  out  the  matter  in  his  own  fashion;  but  that  he 
should,  if  he  can,  find  flaws  in  the  Agnostic  position ;  and, 
even  if  demonstration  is  not  to  be  had,  that  he  should  put, 

*  "  Let  us  maintain,  before  we  have  proved.  This  seeming  paradox 
is  the  secret  of  happiness  "  (Dr.  Newman :  Tract  85,  p.  85). 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  353 

in  their  full  force,  the  grounds  of  the  conclusions  he  thinks 
probable.  The  scientific  theologian  admits  the  Agnostic 
principle,  however  widely  his  results  may  differ  from  those 
reached  by  the  majority  of  Agnostics. 

But,  as  between  Agnosticism  and  Ecclesiasticism,  or,  as 
our  neighbors  across  the  channel  call  it,  Clericalism,  there 
can  be  neither  peace  nor  truce.  The  Cleric  asserts  that  it  is 
morally  wrong  not  to  believe  certain  propositions,  whatever 
the  results  of  a  strict  scientific  investigation  of  the  evidence 
of  these  propositions.  He  tells  us  "  that  religious  error  is, 
in  itself,  of  an  immoral  nature."  *  He  declares  that  he  has 
prejudged  certain  conclusions,  and  looks  upon  those  who 
show  cause  for  arrest  of  judgment  as  emissaries  of  Satan.  It 
necessarily  follows  that,  for  him,  the  attainment  of  faith, 
not  the  ascertainment  of  truth,  is  the  highest  aim  of  mental 
life.  And,  on  careful  analysis  of  the  nature  of  this  faith,  it 
will  too  often  be  found  to  be,  not  the  mystic  process  of  unity 
with  the  Divine,  understood  by  the  religious  enthusiast — but 
that  which  the  candid  simplicity  of  a  Sunday  scholar  once 
defined  it  to  be.  "  Faith,"  said  this  unconsious  plagiarist  of 
Tertullian,  "  is  the  power  of  saying  you  believe  things  which 
are  incredible." 

Now  I,  and  many  other  Agnostics,  believe  that  faith,  in 
this  sense,  is  an  abomination ;  and  though  we  do  not  indulge 
in  the  luxury  of  self -righteousness  so  far  as  to  call  those  who 
are  not  of  our  way  of  thinking  hard  names,  we  do  feel  that 
the  disagreement  between  ourselves  and  those  who  hold  this 
doctrine  is  even  more  moral  than  intellectual.  It  is  desir- 
able there  should  be  an  end  of  any  mistakes  on  this  topic. 
If  our  clerical  opponents  were  clearly  aware  of  the  real  state 
of  the  case,  there  would  be  an  end  of  the  curious  delusion, 
which  often  appears  between  the  lines  of  their  writings, 
that  those  whom  they  are  so  fond  of  calling  "  Infidels  "  are 
people  who  not  only  ought  to  be,  but  in  their  hearts  are, 

*  Dr.  Newman,  Essay  on  Development,  p.  357. 
16 


354  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ashamed  of  themselves.  It  would  be  discourteous  to  do  more 
than  hint  the  antipodal  opposition  of  this  pleasant  dream  of 
theirs  to  facts. 

The  clerics  and  their  lay  allies  commonly  tell  us,  that  if 
we  refuse  to  admit  that  there  is  good  ground  for  expressing 
definite  convictions  about  certain  topics,  the  bonds  of  human 
society  will  dissolve  and  mankind  lapse  into  savagery.  There 
are  several  answers  to  this  assertion.  One  is  that  the  bonds 
of  human  society  were  formed  without  the  aid  of  their 
theology;  and,  in  the  opinion  of  not  a  few  competent 
judges,  have  been  weakened  rather  than  strengthened  by  a 
good  deal  of  it.  Greek  science,  Greek  art,  the  ethics  of  old 
Israel,  the  social  organization  of  old  Eome,  contrived  to  come 
into  being  without  the  help  of  any  one  who  believed  in  a 
single  distinctive  article  of  the  simplest  of  the  Christian 
creeds.  The  science,  the  art,  the  jurisprudence,  the  chief 
political  and  social  theories,  of  the  modern  world  have  grown 
out  of  those  of  Greece  and  Eome — not  by  favor  of,  but  in  the 
teeth  of,  the  fundamental  teachings  of  early  Christianity,  to 
which  science,  art,  and  any  serious  occupation  with  the 
things  of  this  world,  were  alike  despicable. 

Again,  all  that  is  best  in  the  ethics  of  the  modern  world, 
in  so  far  as  it  has  not  grown  out  of  Greek  thought,  or  Bar- 
barian manhood,  is  the  direct  development  of  the  ethics  of 
old  Israel.  There  is  no  code  of  legislation,  ancient  or  mod- 
ern, at  once  so  just  and  so  merciful,  so  tender  to  the  weak  and 
poor,  as  the  Jewish  law ;  and,  if  the  Gospels  are  to  be  trusted, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  himself  declared  that  he  taught  nothing 
but  that  which  lay  implicitly,  or  explicitly,  in  the  religious 
and  ethical  system  of  his  people. 

And  the  scribe  said  unto  him,  Of  a  truth,  Teacher,  thou  hast 
well  said  that  He  is  one ;  and  there  is  none  other  but  He :  and 
to  love  Him  with  all  the  heart,  and  with  all  the  understanding, 
and  with  all  the  strength,  and  to  love  his  neighbor  as  himself, 
is  much  more  than  all  whole  burnt  offerings  and  sacrifices. 
(Mark  xii.  32,  33). 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  355 

Here  is  the  briefest  of  summaries  of  the  teaching  of  the 
prophets  of  Israel  of  the  eighth  century ;  does  the  Teacher, 
whose  doctrine  is  thus  set  forth  in  his  presence,  repudiate  the 
exposition  ?  Nay ;  we  are  told,  on  the  contrary,  that  Jesus 
saw  that  he  "  answered  discreetly,"  and  replied,  "  Thou  art 
not  far  from  the  Kingdom  of  God." 

So  that  I  think  that  even  if  the  creeds,  from  the  so-called 
"  Apostles' "  to  the  so-called  "  Athanasian,"  were  swept  into 
oblivion ;  and  even  if  the  human  race  should  arrive  at  the 
conclusion  that,  whether  a  bishop  washes  a  cup  or  leaves  it 
unwashed,  is  not  a  matter  of  the  least  consequence,  it  will  get 
on  very  well.  The  causes  which  have  led  to  the  development 
of  morality  in  mankind,  which  have  guided  or  impelled  us  all 
the  way  from  the  savage  to  the  civilized  state,  will  not  cease 
to  operate  because  a  number  of  ecclesiastical  hypotheses  turn 
out  to  be  baseless.  And,  even  if  the  absurd  notion  that  mo- 
rality is  more  the  child  of  speculation  than  of  practical  neces- 
sity and  inherited  instinct,  had  any  foundation;  if  all  the 
world  is  going  to  thieve,  murder,  and  otherwise  misconduct 
itself  as  soon  as  it  discovers  that  certain  portions  of  ancient 
history  are  mythical ;  what  is  the  relevance  of  such  arguments 
to  any  one  who  holds  by  the  Agnostic  principle  ? 

Surely,  the  attempt  to  cast  out  Beelzebub  by  the  aid  of 
Beelzebub  is  a  hopeful  procedure  as  compared  to  that  of 
preserving  morality  by  the  aid  of  immorality.  For  I  suppose 
it  is  admitted  that  an  Agnostic  may  be  perfectly  sincere,  may 
be  competent,  and  may  have  studied  the  question  at  issue 
with  as  much  care  as  his  clerical  opponents.  But,  if  the 
Agnostic  really  believes  what  he  says,  the  "  dreadful  conse- 
quence "  argufier  (consistently,  I  admit,  with  his  own  princi- 
ples) virtually  asks  him  to  abstain  from  telling  the  truth,  or 
to  say  what  he  believes  to  be  untrue,  because  of  the  supposed 
injurious  consequences  to  morality.  "  Beloved  brethren,  that 
we  may  be  spotlessly  moral,  before  all  things  let  us  lie,"  is  the 
sum  total  of  many  an  exhortation  addressed  to  the  "  Infidel." 
Now,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  we  can  not  oblige  our  ex- 


356  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

horters.  We  leave  the  practical  application  of  the  convenient 
doctrines  of  "  Eeserve  "  and  "  Non-natural  interpretation  "  to 
those  who  invented  them. 

I  trust  that  I  have  now  made  amends  for  any  ambiguity, 
or  want  of  fullness,  in  my  previous  exposition  of  that  which 
I  hold  to  be  the  essence  of  the  Agnostic  doctrine.  Hencefor- 
ward, I  might  hope  to  hear  no  more  of  the  assertion  that  we 
are  necessarily  Materialists,  Idealists,  Atheists,  Theists,  or  any 
other  ists,  if  experience  had  led  me  to  think  that  the  proved 
falsity  of  a  statement  was  any  guarantee  against  its  repetition. 
And  those  who  appreciate  the  nature  of  our  position  will  see, 
at  once,  that  when  Ecclesiasticism  declares  that  we  ought  to 
believe  this,  that,  and  the  other,  and  are  very  wicked  if  we 
don't,  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  give  any  answer  but  this :  We 
have  not  the  slightest  objection  to  believe  anything  you  like, 
if  you  will  give  us  good  grounds  for  belief ;  but,  if  you  can 
not,  we  must  respectfully  refuse,  even  if  that  refusal  should 
wreck  morality  and  insure  our  own  damnation  several  times 
over.  We  are  quite  content  to  leave  that  to  the  decision  of 
the  future.  The  course  of  the  past  has  impressed  us  with 
the  firm  conviction  that  no  good  ever  comes  of  falsehood,  and 
we  feel  warranted  in  refusing  even  to  experiment  in  that 
direction. 

In  the  course  of  the  present  discussion  it  has  been  asserted 
that  the  "  Sermon  on  the  Mount "  and  the  "  Lord's  Prayer  " 
furnish  a  summary  and  condensed  view  of  the  essentials  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  set  forth  by  himself.  Now 
this  supposed  Summa  of  Nazarene  theology  distinctly  affirms 
the  existence  of  a  spiritual  world,  of  a  Heaven,  and  of  a  Hell 
of  fire ;  it  teaches  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  malignity 
of  the  Devil ;  it  declares  the  superintending  providence  of 
the  former  and  our  need  of  deliverance  from  the  machina- 
tions of  the  latter ;  it  affirms  the  fact  of  demoniac  possession 
and  the  power  of  casting  out  devils  by  the  faithful.  And, 
from  these  premises,  the  conclusion  is  drawn,  that  those  ag- 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  357 

nostics  who  deny  that  there  is  any  evidence  of  such  a  char- 
acter as  to  justify  certainty,  respecting  the  existence  and  the 
nature  of  the  spiritual  world,  contradict  the  express  declara- 
tions of  Jesus.  I  have  replied  to  this  argumentation  by 
showing  that  there  is  strong  reason  to  doubt  the  historical 
accuracy  of  the  attribution  to  Jesus  of  either  the  "  Sermon 
on  the  Mount "  or  the  "  Lord's  Prayer  " ;  and,  therefore,  that 
the  conclusion  in  question  is  not  warranted,  at  any  rate  on 
the  grounds  set  forth. 

But,  whether  the  Gospels  contain  trustworthy  statements 
about  this  and  other  alleged  historical  facts  or  not,  it  is  quite 
certain  that  from  them,  taken  together  with  the  other  books 
of  the  New  Testament,  we  may  collect  a  pretty  complete  ex- 
position of  that  theory  of  the  spiritual  world  which  was  held 
by  both  Nazarenes  and  Christians ;  and  which  was  undoubtedly 
supposed  by  them  to  be  fully  sanctioned  by  Jesus,  though  it 
is  just  as  clear  that  they  did  not  imagine  it  contained  any 
revelation  by  him  of  something  heretofore  unknown.  If  the 
pneumatological  doctrine  which  pervades  the  whole  New 
Testament  is  nowhere  systematically  stated,  it  is  everywhere 
assumed.  The  writers  of  the  Gospels  and  of  the  Acts  take  it 
for  granted,  as  a  matter  of  common  knowledge ;  and  it  is  easy 
to  gather  from  these  sources  a  series  of  propositions,  which 
only  need  arrangement  to  form  a  complete  system. 

In  this  system,  Man  is  considered  to  be  a  duality  formed 
of  a  spiritual  element,  the  soul ;  and  a  corporeal  *  element, 
the  body.  And  this  duality  is  repeated  in  the  Universe, 
which  consists  of  a  corporeal  world  embraced  and  interpene- 
trated by   a   spiritual   world.      The  former   consists  of  the 


*  It  is  by  no  means  to  be  assumed  that  "  spiritual "  and  "  corporeal " 
are  exact  equivalents  of  "  immaterial "  and  "  material "  in  the  minds  of 
ancient  speculators  on  these  topics.  The  "  spiritual  body  "  of  the  risen 
dead  (1  Cor.  xv.)  is  not  the  "  natural "  "flesh  and  blood  "  body.  Paul 
does  not  teach  the  resurrection  of  the  body  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
word  "  body  " ;  a  fact,  often  overlooked,  but  pregnant  with  many  con- 
sequences. 


358  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

earth,  as  its  principal  and  central  constituent,  with  the  sub- 
sidiary sun,  planets,  and  stars.  Above  the  earth  is  the  air, 
and  below  it  the  watery  abyss.  Whether  the  heaven,  which 
is  conceived  to  be  above  the  air,  and  the  hell  in,  or  below,  the 
subterranean  deeps,  are  be  taken  as  corporeal  or  incorporeal 
is  not  clear.  However  this  may  be,  the  heaven  and  the  air, 
the  earth  and  the  abyss,  are  peopled  by  innumerable  beings 
analogous  in  nature  to  the  spiritual  element  in  man,  and  these 
spirits  are  of  two  kinds,  good  and  bad.  The  chief  of  the 
good  spirits,  infinitely  superior  to  all  the  others,  and  their 
creator,  as  well  as  the  creator  of  the  corporeal  world  and  of 
the  bad  spirits,  is  God.  His  residence  is  heaven,  where  he  is 
surrounded  by  the  ordered  hosts  of  good  spirits ;  his  angels, 
or  messengers,  and  the  executors  of  his  will  throughout  the 
universe. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  chief  of  the  bad  spirits  is  Satan, 
the  devil  par  excellence.  He  and  his  company  of  demons  are 
free  to  roam  through  all  parts  of  the  universe,  except  the 
heaven.  These  bad  spirits  are  far  superior  to  man  in  power 
and  subtlety,  and  their  whole  energies  are  devoted  to  bring- 
ing physical  and  moral  evils  upon  him,  and  to  thwarting,  so 
far  as  their  power  goes,  the  benevolent  intentions  of  the  Su- 
preme Being.  In  fact,  the  souls  and  bodies  of  men  form 
both  the  theatre  and  the  prize  of  an  incessant  warfare  be- 
tween the  good  and  the  evil  spirits — the  powers  of  light  and 
the  powers  of  darkness.  By  leading  Eve  astray,  Satan 
brought  sin  and  death  upon  mankind.  As  the  gods  of  the 
heathen,  the  demons  are  the  founders  and  maintainers  of 
idolatry ;  as  the  "  powers  of  the  air  "  they  afflict  mankind 
with  pestilence  and  famine  ;  as  "  unclean  spirits  "  they  cause' 
disease  of  mind  and  body. 

The  significance  of  the  appearance  of  Jesus,  in  the  capa- 
city of  the  Messiah  or  Christ,  is  the  reversal  of  the  satanic 
work  by  putting  an  end  to  both  sin  and  death.  He  an- 
nounces that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand,  when  the 
"  Prince  of  this  world  "  shall  be  finally  "  cast  out "  (John 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  359 

xii,  31)  from  the  cosmos,  as  Jesus,  during  his  earthly  career, 
cast  him  out  from  individuals.  Then  will  Satan  and  all  his 
devilry,  along  with  the  wicked  whom  they  have  seduced  to 
their  destruction,  be  hurled  into  the  abyss  of  unquenchable 
fire — there  to  endure  continual  torture,  without  a  hope  of 
winning  pardon  from  the  merciful  God,  their  Father ;  or  of 
moving  the  glorified  Messiah  to  one  more  act  of  pitiful  inter- 
cession ;  or  even  of  interrupting,  by  a  momentary  sympathy 
with  their  wretchedness,  the  harmonious  psalmody  of  their 
brother  angels  and  men,  eternally  lapped  in  bliss  unspeakable. 
The  straitest  Protestant,  who  refuses  to  admit  the  exist- 
ence of  any  source  of  Divine  truth,  except  the  Bible,  will  not 
deny  that  every  point  of  the  pneumatological  theory  here  set 
forth  has  ample  scriptural  warranty.  The  Gospels,  the  Acts, 
the  Epistles,  and  the  Apocalypse  assert  the  existence  of  the 
devil,  of  his  demons  and  of  Hell,  as  plainly  as  they  do  that 
of  God  and  His  angels  and  Heaven.  It  is  plain  that  the 
Messianic  and  the  Satanic  conceptions  of  the  writers  of  these 
books  are  the  obverse  and  the  reverse  of  the  same  intellectual 
coinage.  If  we  turn  from  Scripture  to  the  traditions  of  the 
Fathers  and  the  confessions  of  the  Churches,  it  will  appear 
that,  in  this  one  particular,  at  any  rate,  time  has  brought 
about  no  important  deviation  from  primitive  belief.  From 
Justin  onward,  it  may  often  be  a  fair  question  whether  God, 
or  the  devil,  occupies  a  larger  share  of  the  attention  of  the 
Fathers.  It  is  the  devil  who  instigates  the  Eoman  authori- 
ties to  persecute ;  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  paganism  are 
devils,  and  idolatry  itself  is  an  invention  of  Satan ;  if  a  saint 
falls  away  from  grace,  it  is  by  the  seduction  of  the  demon ; 
if  heresy  arises,  the  devil  has  suggested  it ;  and  some  of  the 
Fathers  *  go  so  far  as  to  challenge  the  pagans  to  a  sort  of  ex- 

*  Tertullian  (Apolog.  adv.  Gentes,  cap.  xxiii)  thus  challenges  the  Ro- 
man authorities  :  let  them  bring  a  possessed  person  into  the  presence  of 
a  Christian  before  their  tribunal;  and,  if  the  demon  does  not  confess 
himself  to  be  such,  on  the  order  of  the  Christian,  let  the  Christian  be 
executed  out  of  hand. 


360  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

orcising  match,  by  way  of  testing  the  truth  of  Christianity. 
Mediaeval  Christianity  is  at  one  with  patristic  on  this  head. 
The  masses,  the  clergy,  the  theologians,  and  the  philosophers 
alike,  live  and  move  and  have  their  being  in  a  world  full  of 
demons,  in  which  sorcery  and  possession  are  everyday  occur- 
rences. Nor  did  the  Reformation  make  any  difference. 
Whatever  else  Luther  assailed,  he  left  the  traditional  demon- 
ology  untouched ;  nor  could  any  one  have  entertained  a 
more  hearty  and  uncompromising  belief  in  the  devil,  than  he 
and,  at  a  later  period,  the  Calvinistic  fanatics  of  New  England 
did.  Finally,  in  these  last  years  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
the  demonological  hypotheses  of  the  first  century  are,  explic- 
itly or  implicitly,  held  and  occasionally  acted  upon  by  the  im- 
mense majority  of  Christians  of  all  confessions. 

Only  here  and  there  has  the  progress  of  scientific  thought, 
outside  the  ecclesiastical  world,  so  far  affected  Christians, 
that  they  and  their  teachers  fight  shy  of  the  demonology  of 
their  creed.  They  are  fain  to  conceal  their  real  disbelief  in 
one  half  of  Christian  doctrine  by  judicious  silence  about  it ; 
or  by  flight  to  those  refuges  for  the  logically  destitute,  accom- 
modation or  allegory.  But  the  faithful  who  fly  to  allegory 
in  order  to  escape  absurdity  resemble  nothing  so  much  as  the 
sheep  in  the  fable  who — to  save  their  lives — jumped  into  the 
pit.  The  allegory  pit  is  too  commodious,  is  ready  to  swallow 
up  so  much  more  than  one  wants  to  put  into  it.  If  the  story 
of  the  temptation  is  an  allegory ;  if  the  early  recognition  of 
Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God  by  the  demons  is  an  allegory ;  if  the 
plain  declaration  by  the  writer  of  the  first  Epistle  of  John 
(iii.  8),  "  To  this  end  was  the  Son  of  God  manifested  that 
He  might  destroy  the  works  of  the  devil,"  is  allegorical,  then 
the  Pauline  version  of  the  Fall  may  be  allegorical,  and  still 
more  the  words  of  consecration  of  the  Eucharist,  or  the  prom- 
ise of  the  second  coming ;  in  fact,  there  is  not  a  dogma  of 
ecclesiastical  Christianity  the  scriptural  basis  of  which  may 
not  be  whittled  away  by  a  similar  process. 

As  to  accommodation,  let  any  honest  man  who  can  read 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  361 

the  New  Testament  ask  himself  whether  Jesus  and  his  im- 
mediate friends  and  disciples  can  be  dishonored  more  grossly 
than  by  the  supposition  that  they  said  and  did  that  which  is 
attributed  to  them;  while,  in  reality,  they  disbelieved  in 
Satan  and  his  demons,  in  possession  and  in  exorcism  ?  * 

An  eminent  theologian  has  justly  observed  that  we  have 
no  right  to  look  at  the  propositions  of  the  Christian  faith 
with  one  eye  open  and  the  other  shut.  {Tract  85,  p.  29.) 
It  really  is  not  permissible  to  see,  with  one  eye,  that  Jesus  is 
affirmed  to  declare  the  personality  and  the  Fatherhood  of 
God,  His  loving  providence  and  His  accessibility  to  prayer ; 
and  to  shut  the  other  to  the  no  less  definite  teaching  ascribed 
to  Jesus  in  regard  to  the  personality  and  the  misanthropy  of 
the  devil,  his  malignant  watchfulness,  and  his  subjection  to 
exorcistic  formulas  and  rites.  Jesus  is  made  to  say  that  the 
devil  "  was  a  murderer  from  the  beginning  "  (John  viii.  44) 
by  the  same  authority  as  that  upon  which  we  depend  for  his 
asserted  declaration  that  "  God  is  a  spirit "  (John  iv.  24). 

To  those  wTho  admit  the  authority  of  the  famous  Vincen- 
tian  dictum  that  the  doctrine  which  has  been  held  "  always, 
everywhere,  and  by  all "  is  to  be  received  as  authoritative, 
the  demonology  must  possess  a  higher  sanction  than  any 
other  Christian  dogma,  except,  perhaps,  those  of  the  Besur- 
rection  and  of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus;  for  it  would  be 
difficult  to  name  any  other  points  of  doctrine  on  which  the 
Nazarene  does  not  differ  from  the  Christian,  and  the  differ- 
ent historical  stages  and  contemporary  subdivisions  of  Chris- 
tianity from  one  another.  And,  if  the  demonology  is  ac- 
cepted, there  can  be  no  reason  for  rejecting  all  those  mira- 
cles in  which  demons  play  a  part.  The  Gadarene  story  fits 
into  the  general  scheme  of  Christianity;  and  the  evidence 
for  "  Legion  "  and  their  doings  is  just  as  good  as  any  other  in 
the  New  Testament  for  the  doctrine  which  the  story  illustrates. 

*  See  the  expression  of  orthodox  opinion  upon  the  "  accommoda- 
tion "  subterfuge  already  cited  above,  p.  336. 


362  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

It  was  with  the  purpose  of  bringing  this  great  fact  into 
prominence ;  of  getting  people  to  open  both  their  eyes  when 
they  look  at  Ecclesiasticism ;  that  I  devoted  so  much  space 
to  that  miraculous  story  which  happens  to  be  one  of  the  best 
types  of  its  class.  And  I  could  not  wish  for  a  better  justi- 
fication of  the  course  I  have  adopted,  than  the  fact  that  my 
heroically  consistent  adversary  has  declared  his  implicit  be- 
lief in  the  Gadarene  story  and  (by  necessary  consequence)  in 
the  Christian  demonology  as  a  whole.  It  must  be  obvious, 
by  this  time,  that,  if  the  account  of  the  spiritual  world 
given  in  the  New  Testament,  professedly  on  the  authority  of 
Jesus,  is  true,  then  the  demonological  half  of  that  account 
must  be  just  as  true  as  the  other  half.  And,  therefore,  those 
who  question  the  demonology,  or  try  to  explain  it  away,  deny 
the  truth  of  what  Jesus  said,  and  are,  in  ecclesiastical  termi- 
nology, "  Infidels  "  just  as  much  as  those  who  deny  the  spir- 
ituality of  God.  This  is  as  plain  as  anything  can  well  be, 
and  the  dilemma  for  my  opponent  was  either  to  assert  that 
the  Gadarene  pig-bedevilment  actually  occurred,  or  to  write 
himself  down  an  "  Infidel."  As  was  to  be  expected,  he  chose 
the  former  alternative  ;  and  I  may  express  my  great  satisfac- 
tion at  finding  that  there  is  one  spot  of  common  ground  on 
which  both  he  and  I  stand.  So  far  as  I  can  judge,  we  are 
agreed  to  state  one  of  the  broad  issues  between  the  conse- 
quences of  agnostic  principles  (as  I  draw  them),  and  the 
consequences  of  ecclesiastical  dogmatism  (as  he  accepts  it), 
as  follows. 

Ecclesiasticism  says :  The  demonology  of  the  Gospels  is 
an  essential  part  of  that  account  of  that  spiritual  world,  the 
truth  of  which  it  declares  to  be  certified  by  Jesus. 

Agnosticism  (mejudice)  says:  There  is  no  good  evidence 
of  the  existence  of  a  demonic  spiritual  world,  and  much  rea- 
son for  doubting  it. 

Hereupon  the  ecclesiastic  may  observe  :  Your  doubt 
means  that  you  disbelieve  Jesus ;  therefore  you  are  an  "  In- 
fidel" instead  of  an  "Agnostic."     To  which  the  agnostic 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  333 

may  reply :  No ;  for  two  reasons :  first,  because  your  evidence 
that  Jesus  said  what  you  say  he  said  is  worth  very  little ;  and 
secondly,  because  a  man  may  be  an  agnostic,  in  the  sense  of 
admitting  he  has  no  positive  knowledge,  and  yet  consider 
that  he  has  more  or  less  probable  ground  for  accepting  any 
given  hypothesis  about  the  spiritual  world.  Just  as  a  man 
may  frankly  declare  that  he  has  no  means  of  knowing  wheth- 
er the  planets  generally  are  inhabited  or  not,  and  yet  may 
think  one  of  the  two  possible  hypotheses  more  likely  than 
the  other,  so  he  may  admit  that  he  has  no  means  of  knowing 
anything  about  the  spiritual  world,  and  yet  may  think  one 
or  other  of  the  current  views  on  the  subject,  to  some  ex- 
tent, probable. 

The  second  answer  is  so  obviously  valid  that  it  needs  no 
discussion.  I  draw  attention  to  it  simply  in  justice  to  those 
agnostics  who  may  attach  greater  value  than  I  do  to  any  sort 
of  pneumatological  speculations,  and  not  because  I  wish  to 
escape  the  responsibility  of  declaring  that,  whether  Jesus 
sanctioned  the  demonological  part  of  Christianity  or  not,  I 
unhesitatingly  reject  it.  The  first  answer,  on  the  other  hand, 
opens  up  the  whole  question  of  the  claim  of  the  biblical  and 
other  sources,  from  which  hypotheses  concerning  the  spir- 
itual world  are  derived,  to  be  regarded  as  unimpeachable  his- 
torical evidence  as  to  matters  of  fact. 

Now,  in  respect  of  the  trustworthiness  of  the  Gospel  nar- 
ratives, I  was  anxious  to  get  rid  of  the  common  assumption 
that  the  determination  of  the  authorship  and  of  the  dates  of 
these  works  is  a  matter  of  fundamental  importance.  That 
assumption  is  based  upon  the  notion  that  what  contemporary 
witnesses  say  must  be  true,  or,  at  least,  has  always  a  prima 
facie  claim  to  be  so  regarded ;  so  that  if  the  writers  of  any 
of  the  Gospels  were  contemporaries  of  the  events  (and  still 
more  if  they  were  in  the  position  of  eye-witnesses)  the  mira- 
cles they  narrate  must  be  historically  true,  and,  consequently, 
the  demonology  which  they  involve  must  be  accepted.  But 
the  story  of  the  Translation  of  -the  blessed  martyrs  Marcel- 


364  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

linus  and  Petrus,  and  the  other  considerations  (to  which 
endless  additions  might  have  been  made  from  the  Fathers 
and  the  mediaeval  writers)  set  forth  in  a  preceding  essay, 
yield,  in  my  judgment,  satisfactory  proof  that,  where  the 
miraculous  is  concerned,  neither  considerable  intellectual 
ability,  nor  undoubted  honesty,  nor  knowledge  of  the  world, 
nor  proved  faithfulness  as  civil  historians,  nor  profound 
piety,  on  the  part  of  eye-witnesses  and  contemporaries, 
affords  any  guarantee  of  the  objective  truth  of  their  state- 
ments, when  we  know  that  a  firm  belief  in  the  miraculous 
was  ingrained  in  their  minds,  and  was  the  pre-supposition  of 
their  observations  and  reasonings. 

Therefore,  although  it  be,  as  I  believe,  demonstrable  that 
we  have  no  real  knowledge  of  the  authorship,  or  of  the  date 
of  composition  of  the  Gospels,  as  they  have  come  down  to  us, 
and  that  nothing  better  than  more  or  less  probable  guesses 
can  be  arrived  at  on  that  subject,  I  have  not  cared  to  expend 
any  space  on  the  question.  It  will  be  admitted,  I  suppose, 
that  the  authors  of  the  works  attributed  to  Matthew,  Mark, 
Luke,  and  John,  whoever  they  may  be,  are  personages  whose 
capacity  and  judgment  in  the  narration  of  ordinary  events 
are  not  quite  so  well  certified  as  those  of  Eginhard ;  and  we 
have  seen  what  the  value  of  Eginhard's  evidence  is  when  the 
miraculous  is  in  question. 

I  have  been  careful  to  explain  that  the  arguments  which 
I  have  used  in  the  course  of  this  discussion  are  not  new  ;  that 
they  are  historical  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  what  is  com- 
monly called  science ;  and  that  they  are  all,  to  the  best  of  my 
belief,  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  theologians  of  repute. 

The  position  which  I  have  taken  up,  that  the  evidence  in 
favor  of  such  miracles  as  those  recorded  by  Eginhard,  and 
consequently  of  mediaeval  demonology,  is  quite  as  good  as 
that  in  favor  of  such  miracles  as  the  Gadarene,  and  conse- 
quently of  Nazarene  demonology,  is  none  of  my  discovery. 
Its  strength  was,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  suggested,  a  cent- 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  365 

ury  and  a  half  ago,  by  a  theological  scholar  of  eminence ; 
and  it  has  been,  if  not  exactly  occupied,  yet  so  fortified  with 
bastions  and  redoubts  by  a  living  ecclesiastical  Vauban,  that, 
in  my  judgment,  it  has  been  rendered  impregnable.  In  the 
early  part  of  the  last  century,  the  ecclesiastical  mind  in  this 
country  was  much  exercised  by  the  question,  not  exactly  of 
miracles,  the  occurrence  of  which  in  biblical  times  was  axio- 
matic, but  by  the  problem  :  When  did  miracles  cease  ?  Angli- 
can divines  were  quite  sure  that  no  miracles  had  happened 
in  their  day,  nor  for  some  time  past ;  they  were  equally  sure 
that  they  happened  sixteen  or  seventeen  centuries  earlier. 
And  it  was  a  vital  question  for  them  to  determine  at  what 
point  of  time,  between  this  terminus  a  quo  and  that  terminus 
ad  quern,  miracles  came  to  an  end. 

The  Anglicans  and  the  Eomanists  agreed  in  the  assump- 
tion that  the  possession  of  the  gift  of  miracle-working  was 
prima  facie  evidence  of  the  soundness  of  the  faith  of  the 
miracle-workers.  The  supposition  that  miraculous  powers 
might  be  wielded  by  heretics  (though  it  might  be  supported 
by  high  authority)  led  to  consequences  too  frightful  to  be 
entertained  by  people  who  were  busied  in  building  their  dog- 
matic house  on  the  sands  of  early  Church  history.  If,  as  the 
Romanists  maintained,  an  unbroken  series  of  genuine  mira- 
cles adorned  the  records  of  their  Church,  throughout  the 
whole  of  its  existence,  no  Anglican  could  lightly  venture  to 
accuse  them  of  doctrinal  corruption.  Hence,  the  Anglicans, 
who  indulged  in  such  accusations,  were  bound  to  prove  the 
modern,  the  mediaeval  Eoman,  and  the  later  Patristic,  mira- 
cles false ;  and  to  shut  off  the  wonder-working  power  from 
the  Church  at  the  exact  point  of  time  when  Anglican  doc- 
trine ceased  and  Roman  doctrine  began.  With  a  little  ad- 
justment— a  squeeze  here  and  a  pull  there — the  Christianity 
of  the  first  three  or  four  centuries  might  be  made  to  fit,  or 
seem  to  fit,  pretty  well  into  the  Anglican  scheme.  So  the 
miracles,  from  Justin  say  to  Jerome,  might  be  recognized ; 
while,  in  later  times,  the  Church  having  become  "  corrupt " 


366  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

— that  is  to  say,  having  pursued  one  and  the  same  line  of  de- 
velopment further  than  was  pleasing  to  Anglicans — its  al- 
leged miracles  must  needs  be  shams  and  impostures. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  may  be  imagined  that  the 
establishment  of  a  scientific  frontier  between  the  earlier  realm 
of  supposed  fact  and  the  later  of  asserted  delusion,  had  its 
difficulties ;  and  torrents  of  theological  special  pleading  about 
the  subject  flowed  from  clerical  pens ;  until  that  learned  and 
acute  Anglican  divine,  Conyers  Middleton,  in  his  Free  In- 
quiry, tore  the  sophistical  web  they  had  laboriously  woven  to 
pieces,  and  demonstrated  that  the  miracles  of  the  patristric 
age,  early  and  late,  must  stand  or  fall  together,  inasmuch  as 
the  evidence  for  the  later  is  just  as  good  as  the  evidence  for 
the  earlier  wonders.  If  the  one  set  are  certified  by  contem- 
poraneous witnesses  of  high  repute,  so  are  the  other ;  and,  in 
point  of  probability,  there  is  not  a  pin  to  choose  between  the 
two.  That  is  the  solid  and  irrefragable  result  of  Middleton's 
contribution  to  the  subject.  But  the  Free  Inquirer's  freedom 
had  its  limits ;  and  he  draws  a  sharp  line  of  demarkation  be- 
tween the  patristic  and  the  New  Testament  miracles — on  the 
professed  ground  that  the  accounts  of  the  latter,  being  in- 
spired, are  out  of  the  reach  of  criticism. 

A  century  later,  the  question  was  taken  up  by  another 
divine,  Middleton's  equal  in  learning  and  acuteness,  and  far 
his  superior  in  subtlety  and  dialectic  skill ;  who,  though  an 
Anglican,  scorned  the  name  of  Protestant ;  and,  while  yet  a 
Churchman,  made  it  his  business  to  parade,  with  infinite 
skill,  the  utter  hollowness  of  the  arguments  of  those  of  his 
brother  Churchmen  who  dreamed  that  they  could  be  both  An- 
glicans and  Protestants.  The  argument  of  the  Essay  on  the 
Miracles  recorded  in  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  the  Early 
Ages*  by  the  present  Koman  Cardinal,  but  then  Anglican 


*I  quote  the  first  edition  (1843).  A  second  edition  appeared  in 
1870.  Tract  85  of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times  should  be  read  with  this 
Essay.    If  I  were  called  upon  to  compile  a  Primer  of  "  Infidelity,"  I 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  otf 

Doctor,  John  Henry  Newman,  is  compendiously  stated  by 
himself  in  the  following  passage : 

If  the  miracles  of  Church  history  can  not  be  defended 
by  the  arguments  of  Leslie,  Lyttleton,  Paley,  or  Douglas,  how 
many  of  the  Scripture  miracles  satisfy  their  conditions?  (p. 
cvii). 

And,  although  the  answer  is  not  given  in  so  many  words, 
little  doubt  is  left  on  the  mind  of  the  reader,  that  in  the 
mind  of  the  writer,  it  is  :  None.  In  fact,  this  conclusion  is 
one  which  can  not  be  resisted,  if  the  argument  in  favor  of 
the  Scripture  miracles  is  based  upon  that  which  laymen, 
whether  lawyers,  or  men  of  science,  or  historians,  or  ordinary 
men  of  affairs,  call  evidence.  But  there  is  something  really 
impressive  in  the  magnificent  contempt  with  which  at  times 
Dr.  Newman  sweeps  aside  alike  those  who  offer  and  those 
who  demand  such  evidence. 

Some  infidel  authors  advise  us  to  accept  no  miracles  which 
would  not  have  a  verdict  in  their  favor  in  a  court  of  justice ; 
that  is,  they  employ  against  Scripture  a  weapon  which  Prot- 
estants would  confine  to  attacks  upon  the  Church :  as  if  moral 
and  religious  questions  required  legal  proof,  and  evidence  were 
the  test  of  truth*  (p.  cvii). 

"  As  if  evidence  were  the  test  of  truth  "  ! — although  the 
truth  in  question  is  the  occurrence,  or  the  non-occurrence  of 
certain  phenomena  at  a  certain  time  and  in  a  certain  place. 
This  sudden  revelation  of  the  great  gulf  fixed  between  the 
ecclesiastical  and  the  scientific  mind  is  enough  to  take  away 
the  breath  of  any  one  unfamiliar  with  the  clerical  organon. 
As  if,  one  may  retort,  the  assumption  that  miracles  may,  or 

think  I  should  save  myself  trouble  by  making  a  selection  from  these 
works,  and  from  the  Essay  on  Development  by  the  same  author. 

*  Yet,  when  it  suits  his  purpose,  as  in  the  Introduction  to  the 
Essay  on  Development,  Dr.  Newman  can  demand  strict  evidence  in 
religious  questions  as  sharply  as  any  "  infidel  author " ;  and  he  can 
even  profess  to  yield  to  its  force  {Essay  on  Miracles,  1870,  note,  p.  391). 


368  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS, 

have,  served  a  moral  or  a  religious  end,  in  any  way  alters  the 
fact  that  they  profess  to  be  historical  events,  things  that 
actually  happened  ;  and,  as  such,  must  needs  be  exactly  those 
subjects  about  which  evidence  is  appropriate  and  legal  proofs 
(which  are  such  merely  because  they  afford  adequate  evidence) 
may  be  justly  demanded.  The  G-adarene  miracle  either 
happened,  or  it  did  not.  Whether  the  Gadarene  "  question  " 
is  moral  or  religious,  or  not,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  purely  historical  question  whether  the  demons 
said  what  they  are  declared  to  have  said,  and  the  devil-pos- 
sessed pigs,  did,  or  did  not,  rush  over  the  cliffs  bounding  the 
Lake  of  Gennesareth  on  a  certain  day  of  a  certain  year,  after 
A.D.  26  and  before  a.d.  36  :  for  vague  and  uncertain  as  New 
Testament  chronology  is,  I  suppose  it  may  be  assumed  that 
the  event  in  question,  if  it  happened  at  all,  took  place  during 
the  procuratorship  of  Pilate.  If  that  is  not  a  matter  about 
which  evidence  ought  to  be  required,  and  not  only  legal,  but 
strict  scientific  proof  demanded  by  sane  men  who  are  asked 
to  believe  the  story — what  is  ?  Is  a  reasonable  being  to  be 
seriously  asked  to  credit  statements,  which,  to  put  the  case 
gently,  are  not  exactly  probable,  and  on  the  acceptance  or 
rejection  of  which  his  whole  view  of  life  may  depend,  with- 
out asking  for  as  much  "  legal "  proof  as  would  send  an 
alleged  pickpocket  to  jail,  or  as  would  suffice  to  prove  the 
validity  of  a  disputed  will  ? 

"  Infidel  authors  "  (if,  as  I  am  assured,  I  may  answer  for 
them)  will  decline  to  waste  time  on  mere  darkenings  of 
counsel  of  this  sort ;  but  to  those  Anglicans  who  accept  his 
premises,  Dr.  Newman  is  a  truly  formidable  antagonist. 
What,  indeed,  are  they  to  reply  when  he  puts  the  very  perti- 
nent question  : — 

whether  persons  who  not  merely  question,  but  prejudge  the 
Ecclesiastical  miracles  on  the  ground  of  their  want  of  resem- 
blance, whatever  that  be,  to  those  contained  in  Scripture— as  if 
the  Almighty  oould  not  do  in  the  Christian  Church  what  He 
had  not  already  done  at  the  time  of  its  foundation,  or  under  the 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  3G9 

Mosaic  Covenant — whether  such  reasoners  are  not  siding  with 
the  skeptic, 

and 

whether  it  is  not  a  happy  inconsistency  by  which  they  con- 
tinue to  believe  the  Scriptures  while  they  reject  the  Church  * 
(p.  liii). 

Again,  I  invite  Anglican  orthodoxy  to  consider  this 
passage : — 

the  narrative  of  the  combats  of  St.  Antony  with  evil  spirits,  is  a 
development  rather  than  a  contradiction  of  revelation,  viz.  of 
such  texts  as  speak  of  Satan  being  cast  out  by  prayer  and  fast- 
ing. To  be  shocked,  then,  at  the  miracles  of  Ecclesiastical  his- 
tory, or  to  ridicule  them  for  their  strangeness,  is  no  part  of  a 
scriptural  philosophy  (pp.  liii-liv). 

Further  on,  Dr.  Newman  declares  that  it  has  been  admitted 

that  a  distinct  line  can  be  drawn  in  point  of  character  and  cir- 
cumstance between  the  miracles  of  Scripture  and  of  Church 
history ;  but  this  is  by  no  means  the  case  (p.  lv).  .  .  .  specimens 
are  not  wanting  in  the  history  of  the  Church,  of  miracles  as 
awful  in  their  character  and  as  momentous  in  their  effects  as 
those  which  are  recorded  in  Scripture.  The  fire  interrupting 
the  re-building  of  the  Jewish  temple,  and  the  death  of  Arius, 
are  instances,  in  Ecclesiastical  history,  of  such  solemn  events. 
On  the  other  hand,  difficult  instances  in  the  Scripture  history 
are  such  as  these :  the  serpent  in  Eden,  the  Ark,  Jacob's  vision 
for  the  multiplication  of  his  cattle,  the  speaking  of  Balaam's 
ass,  the  axe  swimming  at  Elisha's  word,  the  miracle  on  the 
swine,  and  various  instances  of  prayers  or  prophecies,  in  which, 
as  in  that  of  Noah's  blessing  and  curse,  words  which  seem  the 
result  of  private  feeling  are  expressly  or  virtually  ascribed  to  a 
Divine  suggestion  (p.  lvi). 

Who   is  to    gainsay    our  ecclesiastical   authority  here? 

*  Compare  Tract  85,  p.  110 :  "  I  am  persuaded  that  were  men  but 
consistent  who  oppose  the  Church  doctrines  as  being  unscriptural,  they 
would  vindicate  the  Jews  for  rejecting  the  Gospel." 


370  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

"  Infidel  authors  "  might  be  accused  of  a  wish  to  ridicule  the 
Scripture  miracles  by  putting  them  on  a  level  with  the  re- 
markable story  about  the  fire  which  stopped  the  re-building 
of  the  Temple,  or  that  about  the  death  of  Arius — but  Dr. 
Newman  is  above  suspicion.  The  pity  is  that  his  list  of 
what  he  delicately  terms  "  difficult "  instances  is  so  short. 
Why  omit  the  manufacture  of  Eve  out  of  Adam's  rib,  on  the 
strict  historical  accuracy  of  which  the  chief  argument  of  the 
defenders  of  an  iniquitous  portion  of  our  present  marriage 
law  depends  ?  Why  leave  out  the  account  of  the  "  Bene 
Elohim  "  and  their  gallantries,  on  which  a  large  part  of  the 
worst  practices  of  the  mediaeval  inquisitors  into  witchcraft 
was  based  ?  Why  forget  the  angel  who  wrestled  with  Jacob, 
and,  as  the  account  suggests,  somewhat  overstepped  the 
bounds  of  fair  play,  at  the  end  of  the  struggle  ?  Surely  we 
must  agree  with  Dr.  Newman  that,  if  all  these  camels  have 
gone  down,  it  savors  of  affection  to  strain  at  such  gnats  as 
the  sudden  ailment  of  Arius  in  the  midst  of  his  deadly,  if 
prayerful,*  enemies ;  and  the  fiery  explosion  which  stopped 
the  Julian  building  operations.  Though  the  ivords  of  the 
"  Conclusion  "  of  the  Essay  on  Miracles  may,  perhaps,  be 
quoted  against  me,  I  may  express  my  satisfaction  at  finding 
myself  in  substantial  accordance  with  a  theologian  above  all 
suspicion  of  heterodoxy.  With  all  my  heart,  I  can  declare 
my  belief  that  there  is  just  as  good  reason  for  believing  in 

*  According  to  Dr.  Newman,  "  This  prayer  [that  of  Bishop  Alex- 
ander, who  begged  God  to  '  take  Arius  away  ']  is  said  to  have  been 
offered  about  3  p.m.  on  the  Saturday ;  that  same  evening  Arius  was  in 
the  great  square  of  Constantine,  when  he  was  suddenly  seized  with, 
indisposition  "  (p.  clxx).  The  "  infidel "  Gibbons  seems  to  have  dared 
to  suggest  that  "  an  option  between  poison  and  miracle  "  is  presented 
by  this  case ;  and,  it  must  be  admitted,  that,  if  the  Bishop  had  been 
within  the  reach  of  a  modern  police  magistrate,  things  might  have 
gone  hardly  with  him.  Modern  "  Infidels,"  possessed  of  a  slight  knowl- 
edge of  chemistry,  are  not  unlikely,  with  no  less  audacity,  to  suggest 
an  "  option  between  fire-damp  and  miracle  "  in  seeking  for  the  cause  of 
the  fiery  outburst  at  Jerusalem. 


AGNOSTICISM   AND  CHRISTIANITY.  371 

the  miraculous  slaying  of  the  man  who  fell  short  of  the 
Athanasian  power  of  affirming  contradictories,  with  respect 
to  the  nature  of  the  Godhead,  as  there  is  for  believing  in  the 
stories  of  the  serpent  and  the  ark  told  in  Genesis,  the  speak- 
ing of  Balaam's  ass  in  Numbers,  or  the  floating  of  the  axe,  at 
Elisha's  order,  in  the  second  book  of  Kings. 

It  is  one  of  the  pecularities  of  a  really  sound  argument 
that  it  is  susceptible  of  the  fullest  development ;  and  that  it 
sometimes  leads  to  conclusions  unexpected  by  those  who  em- 
ploy it.  To  my  mind,  it  is  impossible  to  refuse  to  follow  Dr. 
Newman  when  he  extends  his  reasoning  from  the  miracles  of 
the  patristic  and  mediaeval  ages  backward  in  time  as  far  as 
miracles  are  recorded.  But,  if  the  rules  of  logic  are  valid,  I 
feel  compelled  to  extend  the  argument  forward  to  the  alleged 
Eoman  miracles  of  the  present  day,  which  Dr.  Newman  might 
not  have  admitted,  but  which  Cardinal  Newman  may  hardly 
reject.  Beyond  question,  there  is  as  good,  or  perhaps  better, 
evidence  for  the  miracles  worked  by  our  Lacly  of  Lourdes,  as 
there  is  for  the  floating  of  Elisha's  axe  or  the  speaking  of 
Balaam's  ass.  But  we  must  go  still  further  ;  there  is  a 
modern  system  of  thaumaturgy  and  demonology  which  is 
just  as  well  certified  as  the  ancient.*    Veracious,  excellent, 

*  A  writer  in  a  spiritualist  journal  takes  me  roundly  to  task  for 
venturing  to  doubt  the  historical  and  literal  truth  of  the  Gadarene  story. 
The  following  passage  in  his  letter  is  worth  quotation :  "  Now  to  the 
materialistic  and  scientific  mind,  to  the  uninitiated  in  spiritual  verities, 
certainly  this  story  of  the  Gadarene  or  Gergesene  swine  presents  insur- 
mountable difficulties  ;  it  seems  grotesque  and  nonsensical.  To  the  ex- 
perienced, trained,  and  cultivated  Spiritualist  this  miracle  is,  as  I  am 
prepared  to  show,  one  of  the  most  instructive,  the  most  profoundly  useful, 
and  the  most  beneficent  which  Jesus  ever  wrought  in  the  whole  course  of 
His  pilgrimage  of  redemption  on  earth."  Just  so.  And  the  first  page 
of  this  same  journal  presents  the  following  advertisement,  among  others 
of  the  same  kidney : — 

"  To  Wealthy  Spiritualists. — A  Lady  Medium  of  tried  power 
wishes  to  meet  with  an  elderly  gentleman  who  would  be  willing  to  give 


372  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

sometimes  learned  and  acute  persons,  even  philosophers  of  no 
mean  pretensions,  testify  to  the  "  levitation  "  of  bodies  much 
heavier  than  Elisha's  axe  ;  to  the  existence  of  "  spirits  "  who, 
to  the  mere  tactile  sense,  have  been  indistinguishable  from 
flesh  and  blood,  and  occasionally,  have  wrestled  with  all  the 
vigor  of  Jacob's  opponent :  yet,  further,  to  the  speech,  in 
the  language  of  raps,  of  spiritual  beings,  whose  discourses, 
in  point  of  coherence  and  value,  are  far  inferior  to  that  of 
Balaam's  humble  but  sagacious  steed.  I  have  not  the  small- 
est doubt  that,  if  these  were 'persecuting  times,  there  is  many 
a  worthy  "  spiritualist  "  who  would  cheerfully  go  to  the  stake 
in  support  of  his  pneumatological  faith,  and  furnish  evidence, 
after  Paley's  own  heart,  in  proof  of  the  truth  of  his  doctrines. 
Not  a  few  modern  divines,  doubtless  struck  by  the  impossi- 
bility of  refusing  the  spiritualist  evidence,  if  the  ecclesias- 
cal  evidence  is  accepted,  and  deprived  of  any  a  priori 
objection  by  their  implicit  belief  in  Christian  Demonology, 
show  themselves  ready  to  take  poor  Sludge  seriously,  and  to 
believe  that  he  is  possessed  by  other  devils  than  those  of  need, 
greed,  and  vainglory. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  was  to  be  expected,  though 
it  is  none  the  less  interesting  to  note  the  fact,  that  the  argu- 
ments of  the  latest  school  of  "  spiritualists  "  present  a  wonder- 
ful family  likeness  to  those  which  adorn  the  subtle  disquisi- 
tions of  the  advocate  of  ecclesiastical  miracles  of  forty  years 
ago.  It  is  unfortunate  for  the  "  spiritualists  "  that,  over  and 
over  again,  celebrated  and  trusted  media,  who  really,  in  some 
respects,  call  to  mind  the  Montanist  *  and  gnostic  seers  of 

her  a  comfortable  home  and  maintenance  in  Exchange  for  her  Spiritual- 
istic services,  as  her  guides  consider  her  health  is  too  delicate  for  public 
sittings :  London  preferred. — Address  '  Mary,'  Office  of  Light." 

Are  we  going  back  to  the  days  of  the  Judges,  when  wealthy  Micah 
set  up  his  private  ephod,  teraphim,  and  Levite  ? 

*  Consider  Tertullian's  "  sister  "  ("  hodie  apud  nos  "),  who  conversed 
with  angels,  saw  and  heard  mysteries,  knew  men's  thoughts,  and  pre- 
scribed medicine  for  their  bodies  {De  Anima,  cap.  9).    Tertullian  tells 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  373 

the  second  century,  are  either  proved  in  courts  of  law  to  be 
fraudulent  impostors ;  or,  in  sheer  weariness,  as  it  would  seem 
of  the  honest  dupes  who  swear  by  them,  spontaneously  con- 
fess their  long-continued  iniquities,  as  the  Fox  women  did 
the  other  day  in  New  York.*  But,  whenever  a  catastrophe 
of  this  kind  takes  place,  the  believers  are  no  wise  dismayed 
by  it.  They  freely  admit  that  not  only  the  media,  but  the 
spirits  whom  they  summon,  are  sadly  apt  to  lose  sight  of  the 
elementary  principles  of  right  and  wrong ;  and  they  trium- 
phantly ask :  How  does  the  occurrence  of  occasional  impostures 
disprove  the  genuine  manifestations  (that  is  to  say,  all  those 
which  have  not  yet  been  proved  to  be  impostures  or  delusions)  ? 
And,  in  this,  they  unconsciously  plagiarize  from  the  church- 
man, who  just  as  freely  admits  that  many  ecclesiastical  mira- 
cles may  have  been  forged ;  and  asks,  with  calm  contempt, 
not  only  of  legal  proofs,  but  of  common-sense  probability, 
Why  does  it  follow  that  none  are  to  be  supposed  genuine  ? 
I  must  say,  however,  that  the  spiritualists,  so  far  as  I  know, 
do  not  venture  to  outrage  right  reason  so  boldly  as  the 
ecclesiastics.  They  do  not  sneer  at  "  evidence  " ;  nor  repudi- 
ate the  requirement  of  legal  proofs.  In  fact,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  spiritualists  produce  better  evidence  for 
their  manifestations  than  can  be  shown  either  for  the  miracu- 
lous death  of  Arius,  or  for  the  Invention  of  the  Cross,  f 

us  that  this  woman  saw  the  soul  as  corporeal,  and  described  its  color 
and  shape.  The  "  infidel "  will  probably  be  unable  to  refrain  from  insult- 
ing the  memory  of  the  ecstatic  saint  by  the  remark,  that  Tertullian's 
known  views  about  the  corporeality  of  the  soul  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  the  remarkable  perceptive  powers  of  the  Montanist  medium, 
in  whose  revelations  of  the  spiritual  world  he  took  such  profound 
interest. 

*  See  the  New  York  World  for  Sunday,  21st  October,  1888  ;  and  the 
Report  of  the  Seybert  Commission,  Philadelphia,  1887. 

f  Dr.  Newman's  observation  that  the  miraculous  multiplication  of 
the  pieces  of  the  true  cross  (with  which  "  the  whole  world  is  filled,"  ac- 
cording to  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  ;  and  of  which  some  say  there  are  enough 
extant  to  build  a  man-of-war)  is  no  more  wonderful  than  that  of  the 


374:  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

From  the  "  levitation  "  of  the  axe  at  one  end  of  a  period 
of  near  three  thousand  years  to  the  "  levitation  "  of  Sludge  & 
Co.  at  the  other  end,  there  is  a  complete  continuity  of  the 
miraculous,  with  every  gradation  from  the  childish  to  the 
stupendous,  from  the  gratification  of  a  caprice  to  the  illus- 
tration of  sublime  truth.  There  is  no  drawing  a  line  in  the 
series  that  might  be  set  out  of  plausibly  attested  cases  of 
spiritual  intervention.  If  one  is  true,  all  may  be  true ;  if 
one  is  false,  all  may  be  false. 

This  is,  to  my  mind,  the  inevitable  result  of  that  method 
of  reasoning  which  is  applied  to  the  confutation  of  Protest- 
antism, with  so  much  success,  by  one  of  the  acutest  and 
subtlest  disputants  who  have  ever  championed  Ecclesiasticism 
— and  one  can  not  put  his  claims  to  acuteness  and  subtlety 
higher. 

.  .  .  the  Christianity  of  history  is  not  Protestantism.  If 
ever  there  were  a  safe  truth  it  is  this.  ..."  To  be  deep  in 
history  is  to  cease  to  be  a  Protestant."  * 

I  have  not  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  these  anti-Protestant 
epigrams  are  profoundly  true.  But  I  have  as  little  that,  in 
the  same  sense,  the  "  Christianity  of  history  is  not "  Roman  - 
ism;  and  that  to  be  deeper  in  history  is  to  cease  to  be  a 
Romanist.  The  reasons  which  compel  my  doubts  about  the 
compatibility  of  the  Roman  doctrine,  or  any  other  form  of 
Catholicism,  with  history,  arise  out  of  exactly  the  same  line 
of  argument  as  that  adopted  by  Dr.  Newman  in  the  famous 
essay  which  I  have  just  cited.  If,  with  one  hand,  Dr.  New- 
man has  destroyed  Protestantism,  he  has  annihilated  Roman- 
ism with  the  other ;  and  the  total  result  of  his  ambidextral 
efforts  is  to  shake  Christianity  to  its  foundations.     Nor  was 

loaves  and  fishes  is  one  that  I  do  not  see  my  way  to  contradict.    See 
Essay  on  Miracles,  2d  ed.  p.  163. 

*  An  Essay,  on  the  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,  by  J.  H. 
Newman,  D.  D.,  pp.  7  and  8.    (1878.) 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  375 

any  one  better  aware  that  this  must  be  the  inevitable  result  of 
his  arguments — if  the  world  should  refuse  to  accept  Roman 
doctrines  and  Roman  miracles — than  the  writer  of  Tract  85. 
Dr.  Newman  made  his  choice  and  passed  over  to  the 
Roman  Church  half  a  century  ago.  Some  of  those  who  were 
essentially  in  harmony  with  his  views  preceded,  and  many 
followed  him.  But  many  remained ;  and,  as  the  quondam 
Puseyite  and  present  Ritualistic  party,  they  are  continuing 
that  work  of  sapping  and  mining  the  Protestantism  of  the 
Anglican  Church  which  he  and  his  friends  so  ably  com- 
menced. At  the  present  time,  they  have  no  little  claim  to 
be  considered  victorious  all  along  the  line.  I  am  old  enough 
to  recollect  the  small  beginnings  of  the  Tractarian  party; 
and  I  am  amazed  when  I  consider  the  present  position  of 
their  heirs.  Their  little  leaven  has  leavened,  if  not  the 
whole,  yet  a  very  large  lump  of  the  Anglican  Church  ;  which 
is  now  pretty  much  of  a  preparatory  school  for  Papistry. 
So  that  it  really  behooves  Englishmen  (who,  as  I  have  been 
informed  by  high  authority,  are  all,  legally,  members  of  the 
State  Church,  if  they  profess  to  belong  to  no  other  sect)  to 
wake  up  to  what  that  powerful  organization  is  about,  and 
whither  it  is  tending.  On  this  point,  the  writings  of  Dr. 
Newman,  while  he  still  remained  within  the  Anglican  fold, 
are  a  vast  store  of  the  best  and  the  most  authoritative  infor- 
mation. His  doctrines  on  Ecclesiastical  miracles  and  on 
Development  are  the  corner-stones  of  the  Tractarian  fabric. 
He  believed  that  his  arguments  led  either  Romeward,  or  to 
what  ecclesiastics  call  "  Infidelity,"  and  I  call  Agnosticism. 
I  believe  that  he  was  quite  right  in  this  conviction;  but 
while  he  chooses  the  one  alternative,  I  choose  the  other;  as 
he  rejects  Protestantism  on  the  ground  of  its  incompatibility 
with  history,  so,  a  fortiori,  I  conceive  that  Romanism  ought 
to  be  rejected,  and  that  an  impartial  consideration  of  the 
evidence  must  refuse  the  authority  of  Jesus  to  anything  more 
than  the  Nazarenism  of  James  and  Peter  and  John.  And 
let  it  not  be  supposed  that  this  is  a  mere  "  infidel  "  perversion 


376  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  the  facts.  No  one  has  more  openly  and  clearly  admitted 
the  possibility  that  they  may  be  fairly  interpreted  in  this  way 
than  Dr.  Newman.  If,  he  says,  there  are  texts  which  seem  to 
show  that  Jesus  contemplated  the  evangelization  of  the 
heathen : 

.  .  .  Did  not  the  Apostles  hear  our  Lord?  and  what  was 
their  impression  from  what  they  heard?  Is  it  not  certain  that 
the  Apostles  did  not  gather  this  truth  from  His  teaching? 
{Tract  85,  p.  63). 

He  said,  "Preach  the  Gospel  to  eyery  creature."  These 
words  need  have  only  meant  "  Bring  all  men  to  Christianity 
through  Judaism."  Make  them  Jews,  that  they  may  enjoy 
Christ's  privileges,  which  are  lodged  in  Judaism;  teach  them 
those  rites  and  ceremonies,  circumcision  and  the  like,  which 
hitherto  have  been  dead  ordinances,  and  now  are  living;  and  so 
the  Apostles  seem  to  have  understood  them  {ibid.  p.  65). 

So  far  as  ISTazarenism  differentiated  itself  from  contempo- 
rary orthodox  Judaism,  it  seems  to  have  tended  toward  a  re- 
vival of  the  ethical  and  religious  spirit  of  the  prophetic  age, 
accompanied  by  the  belief  in  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  and  by 
various  accretions  which  had  grown  round  Judaism  subse- 
quently to  the  exile.  To  these  belong  the  doctrines  of  the 
Resurrection,  of  the  Last  Judgment,  of  Heaven  and  Hell ; 
of  the  hierarchy  of  good  angels ;  of  Satan  and  the  hierarchy 
of  evil  spirits.  And  there  is  very  strong  ground  for  believ- 
ing that  all  these  doctrines,  at  least  in  the  shapes  in  which 
they  were  held  by  the  post-exilic  Jews,  were  derived  from 
Persian  and  Babylonian  *  sources,  and  are  essentially  of  hea- 
then origin. 

*  Dr.  Newman  faces  this  question  with  his  customary  ability. 
"  Now,  I  own,  I  am  not  at  all  solicitous  to  deny  that  this  doctrine  of  an 
apostate  Angel  and  his  hosts  was  gained  from  Babylon :  it  might  still 
be  Divine  nevertheless.  God  who  made  the  prophet's  ass  speak,  and 
thereby  instructed  the  prophet,  might  instruct  His  Church  by  means  of 
heathen  Babylon"  {Tract  85,  p.  83).  There  seems  to  be  no  end  to  the 
apologetic  burden  that  Balaam's  ass  can  carry. 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  3?? 

How  far  Jesus  positively  sanctioned  all  these  indrainings 
of  circumjacent  Paganism  into  Judaism ;  how  far  any  one 
has  a  right  to  declare,  that  the  refusal  to  accept  one  or  other 
of  these  doctrines,  as  ascertained  verities,  comes  to  the  same 
thing  as  contradicting  Jesus,  it  appears  to  me  not  easy  to 
say.  But  it  is  hardly  less  difficult  to  conceive  that  he  could 
have  distinctly  negatived  any  of  them ;  and,  more  especially, 
that  demonology  which  has  been  accepted  by  the  Christian 
Churches  in  every  age  and  under  all  their  mutual  antago- 
nisms. But,  I  repeat  my  conviction  that,  whether  Jesus 
sanctioned  the  demonology  of  his  time  and  nation  or  not,  it 
is  doomed.  The  future  of  Christianity,  as  a  dogmatic  system 
and  apart  from  the  old  Israelitish  ethics  which  it  has  appro- 
priated and  developed,  lies  in  the  answer  which  mankind  will 
eventually  give  to  the  question  whether  they  are  prepared  to 
believe  such  stories  as  the  Gadarene  and  the  pneumatological 
hypotheses  which  go  with  it,  or  not.  My  belief  is  they  will 
decline  to  do  anything  of  the  sort,  whenever  and  wherever 
their  minds  have  been  disciplined  by  science.  And  that  dis- 
cipline must  and  will,  at  once  follow  and  lead,  the  footsteps 
of  advancing  civilization. 

The  preceding  pages  wexe  written  before  I  became  ac- 
quainted with  the  contents  of  the  May  number  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century ',  wherein  I  discover  many  things  which  are 
decidedly  not  to  my  advantage.  It  would  appear  that  "  eva- 
sion "  is  my  chief  resource,  "  incapacity  for  strict  argument " 
and  "  rottenness  of  ratiocination  "  my  main  mental  character- 
istics, and  that  it  is  "  barely  credible  "  that  a  statement  which 
I  profess  to  make  of  my  own  knowledge  is  true.  All  which 
things  I  notice,  merely  to  illustrate  the  great  truth,  forced 
on  me  by  long  experience,  that  it  is  only  from  those  who 
enjoy  the  blessing  of  a  firm  hold  of  the  Christian  faith  that 
such  manifestations  of  meekness,  patience,  and  charity  are  to 
be  expected. 

I  had  imagined  that  no  one  who  had  read  my  preceding 

17 


378  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

papers,  could  entertain  a  doubt  as  to  my  position  in  respect 
of  the  main  issue  as  it  has  been  stated  and  restated  by  my 
opponent : 

an  Agnosticism  which  knows  nothing  of  the  relation  of  man  to 
God  must  not  only  refuse  belief  to  our  Lord's  most  undoubted 
teaching,  but  must  deny  the  reality  of  the  spiritual  convictions 
in  which  He  lived.* 

That  is  said  to  be  "  the  simple  question  which  is  at  issue  be- 
tween us,"  and  the  three  testimonies  to  that  teaching  and 
those  convictions  selected  are  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  and  the  Story  of  the  Passion. 

My  answer,  reduced  to  its  briefest  form,  has  been :  In  the 
first  place,  the  evidence  is  such  that  the  exact  nature  of  the 
teachings  and  the  convictions  of  Jesus  is  extremely  uncer- 
tain, so  that  what  ecclesiastics  are  pleased  to  call  a  denial  of 
them  may  be  nothing  of  the  kind.  And,  in  the  second  place, 
if  Jesus  taught  the  demonological  system  involved  in  the 
Gadarene  story — if  a  belief  in  that  system  formed  a  part  of 
the  spiritual  convictions  in  which  he  lived  and  died — then  I, 
for  my  part,  unhesitatingly  refuse  belief  in  that  teaching, 
and  deny  the  reality  of  those  spiritual  convictions.  And  I 
go  further  and  add,  that,  exactly  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  proved 
that  Jesus  sanctioned  the  essentially  pagan  demonological 
theories  current  among  the  Jews  of  his  age,  exactly  in  so  far, 
for  me,  will  his  authority  in  any  matter  touching  the  spiritual 
world  be  weakened. 

With  respect  to  the  first  half  of  my  answer,  I  have  pointed 
out  that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  as  given  in  the  first  Gos- 
pel, is,  in  the  opinion  of  the  best  critics,  a  "  mosaic  work  "  of 
materials  derived  from  different  sources,  and  I  do  not  under- 
stand that  this  statement  is  challenged.  The  only  other 
Gospel,  the  third,  which  contains  something  like  it,  makes, 
not  only  the  discourse,  but  the  circumstances  under  which  it 
was  delivered,  very  different.     Now,  it  is  one  thing  to  say 

*  Nineteenth  Century,  May,  1889  (p.  701). 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  379 

that  there  was  something  real  at  the  bottom  of  the  two  dis- 
courses— which  is  quite  possible ;  and  another  to  affirm  that 
we  have  any  right  to  say  what  that  something  was,  or  to  fix 
upon  any  particular  phrase  and  declare  it  to  be  a  genuine 
utterance.  Those  who  pursue  theology  as  a  science,  and 
bring  to  the  study  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the  ways  of 
ancient  historians,  will  find  no  difficulty  in  providing  illustra- 
tions of  my  meaning.  I  may  supply  one  which  has  come 
within  range  of  my  own  limited  vision. 

In  Josephus's  History  of  the  Wars  of  the  Jeivs  (chap, 
xix.),  that  writer  reports  a  speech  which  he  says  Herod  made 
at  the  opening  of  a  war  with  the  Arabians.  It  is  in  the  first 
person,  and  would  naturally  be  supposed  by  the  reader  to  be 
intended  for  a  true  version  of  what  Herod  said.  In  the 
Antiquities,  written  some  seventeen  years  later,  the  same 
writer  gives  another  report,  also  in  the  first  person,  of  Her- 
od's speech  on  the  same  occasion.  This  second  oration  is 
twice  as  long  as  the  first,  and  though  the  general  tenor  of  the 
two  speeches  is  pretty  much  the  same,  there  is  hardly  any 
verbal  identity,  and  a  good  deal  of  matter  is  introduced  into 
the  one,  which  is  absent  from  the  other.  Josephus  prides 
himself  on  his  accuracy ;  people  whose  fathers  might  have 
heard  Herod's  oration  were  his  contemporaries ;  and  yet  his 
historical  sense  is  so  curiously  undeveloped  that  he  can,  quite 
innocently,  perpetrate  an  obvious  literary  fabrication ;  for 
one  of  the  two  accounts  must  be  incorrect.  Now,  if  I  am 
asked  whether  I  believe  that  Herod  made  some  particular 
statement  on  this  occasion ;  whether,  for  example,  he  uttered 
the  pious  aphorism,  "  Where  God  is,  there  is  both  multitude 
and  courage,"  which  is  given  in  the  Antiquities,  but  not  in 
the  Wars,  I  am  compelled  to  say  I  do  not  know.  One  of 
the  two  reports  must  be  erroneous,  possibly  both  are  :  at  any 
rate,  I  can  not  tell  how  much  of  either  is  true.  And,  if 
some  fervent  admirer  of  the  Idumean  should  build  up  a 
theory  of  Herod's  piety  upon  Josephus's  evidence  that  he 
propounded  the  aphorism,  is  it  a  "mere  evasion"  to  say, 


380  CONTKOVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

in  reply,  that  the  evidence  that  he  did  utter  it  is  worth- 
less? 

It  appears  again  that,  adopting  the  tactics  of  Oonachar 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  Hal  o'  the  Wynd,  I  have  been 
trying  to  get  my  simple-minded  adversary  to  follow  me  on  a 
wild-goose  chase  through  the  early  history  of  Christianity,  in 
the  hope  of  escaping  impending  defeat  on  the  main  issue. 
But  I  may  be  permitted  to  point  out  that  there  is  an  alterna- 
tive hypothesis  which  equally  fits  the  facts ;  and  that,  after 
all,  there  may  have  been  method  in  the  madness  of  my  sup- 
posed panic. 

For  suppose  it  to  be  established  that  Gentile  Christianity 
was  a  totally  different  thing  from  the  Nazarenism  of  Jesus 
and  his  immediate  disciples ;  suppose  it  to  be  demonstrable 
that,  as  early  as  the  sixth  decade  of  our  era  at  least,  there 
were  violent  divergencies  of  opinion  among  the  followers  of 
Jesus  ;  suppose  it  to  be  hardly  doubtful  that  the  Gospels  and 
the  Acts  took  their  present  shapes  under  the  influence  of 
these  divergencies;  suppose  that  their  authors,  and  those 
through  whose  hands  they  passed,  had  notions  of  historical 
veracity  not  more  eccentric  than  those  which  Josephus  occa- 
sionally displays :  surely  the  chances  that  the  Gospels  are 
altogether  trustworthy  records  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  be- 
come very  slender.  And  since  the  whole  of  the  case  of  the 
other  side  is  based  on  the  supposition  that  they  are  accurate 
records  (especially  of  speeches,  about  which  ancient  histori- 
ans are  so  curiously  loose),  I  really  do  venture  to  submit  that 
this  part  of  my  argument  bears  very  seriously  on  the  main 
issue  ;  and,  as  ratiocination,  is  sound  to  the  core. 

Again,  when  I  passed  by  the  topic  of  the  speeches  of 
Jesus  on  the  Cross,  it  appears  that  I  could  have  had  no  other 
motive  than  the  dictates  of  my  native  evasiveness.  An  eccle- 
siastical dignitary  may  have  respectable  reasons  for  declining 
a  fencing  match  "  in  sight  of  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  " ; 
but  an  ecclesiastical  "  Infidel "  !  Never.  It  is  obviously  im- 
possible that,  in  the  belief  that  "  the  greater  includes  the 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  381 

less,"  I,  having  declared  the  Gospel  evidence  in  general,  as  to 
the  sayings  of  Jesus,  to  be  of  questionable  value,  thought  it 
needless  to  select  for  illustration  of  my  views,  those  particular 
instances  which  were  likely  to  be  most  offensive  to  persons  of 
another  way  of  thinking.  But  any  supposition  that  may 
have  been  entertained  that  the  old  familiar  tones  of  the  ec- 
clesiastical war-drum  will  tempt  me  to  engage  in  such  need- 
less discussion  had  better  be  renounced.  I  shall  do  nothing 
of  the  kind.  Let  it  suffice  that  I  ask  my  readers  to  turn  to 
the  twenty- third  chapter  of  Luke  (revised  version),  verse 
thirty-four,  and  he  will  find  in  the  margin 

Some  ancient  authorities  omit:  And  Jesus  said  "  Father  for- 
give them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do." 

So  that,  even  as  late  as  the  fourth  century,  there  were 
ancient  authorities,  indeed  some  of  the  most  ancient  and 
weightiest,  who  either  did  not  know  of  this  utterance,  so 
often  quoted  as  characteristic  of  Jesus,  or  did  not  believe  it 
had  been  uttered. 

Many  years,  ago  I  received  an  anonymous  letter,  which 
abused  me  heartily  for  my  want  of  moral  courage  in  not 
speaking  out.  I  thought  that  one  of  the  oddest  charges  an 
anonymous  letter-writer  could  bring.  But  I  am  not  sure 
that  the  plentiful  sowing  of  the  pages  of  the  article  with 
which  I  am  dealing  with  accusations  of  evasion,  may  not 
seem  odder  to  those  who  consider  that  the  main  strength  of 
the  answers  with  which  I  have  been  favored  (in  this  review 
and  elsewhere)  is  devoted,  not  to  anything  in  the  text  of  my 
first  paper,  but  to  a  note  which  occurs  at  p.  171.    In  this  I  say : 

Dr.  Wace  tells  us :  "  It  may  be  asked  how  far  we  can  rely 
on  the  accounts  we  possess  of  our  Lord's  teaching  on  these 
subjects."  And  he  seems  to  think  the  question  appropriately 
answered  by  the  assertion  that  it  "  ought  to  be  regarded  as  set- 
tled by  M.  Eenan's  practical  surrender  of  the  adverse  case." 

I  requested  Dr.  Wace  to  point  out  the  passages  of  M. 
Kenan's  works  in  which,  as  he  affirms,  this  "  practical  surren- 


382  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

der  "  (not  merely  as  to  the  age  and  authorship  of  the  Gospels, 
be  it  observed,  but  as  to  their  historical  value)  is  made,  and 
he  has  been  so  good  as  to  do  so.  Now  let  us  consider  the 
parts  of  Dr.  Wace's  citation  from  Eenan  which  are  relevant 
to  the  issue  : — 

The  author  of  this  Gospel  [Luke]  is  certainly  the  same  as 
the  author  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  Now  the  author  of  the 
Acts  seems  to  be  a  companion  of  St.  Paul — a  character  which 
accords  completely  with  St.  Luke.  I  know  that  more  than 
one  objection  may  be  opposed  to  this  reasoning;  but  one  thing^ 
at  all  events,  is  beyond  doubt,  namely,  that  the  author  of  the 
third  Gospel  and  of  the  Acts  is  a  man  who  belonged  to  the  sec- 
ond apostolic  generation ;  and  this  suffices  for  our  purpose. 

This  is  a  curious  "practical  surrender  of  the  adverse 
case."  M.  Kenan  thinks  that  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  au- 
thor of  the  third  Gospel  is  the  author  of  the  Acts — a  conclu- 
sion in  which  I  suppose  critics  generally  agree.  He  goes  on 
to  remark  that  this  person  seems  to  be  a  companion  of  St. 
Paul,  and  adds  that  Luke  was  a  companion  of  St.  Paul. 
Then,  somewhat  needlessly,  M.  Eenan  points  out  that  there 
is  more  than  one  objection  to  jumping,  from  such  data  as 
these,  to  the  conclusion  that  "  Luke  "  is  the  writer  of  the 
third  Gospel.  And,  finally,  M.  Kenan  is  content  to  reduce 
that  which  is  "  beyond  doubt "  to  the  fact  that  the  author  of 
the  two  books  is  a  man  of  the  second  apostolic  generation. 
Well,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  could  agree  with  all  that  M. 
Kenan  considers  "  beyond  doubt  "  here,  without  surrendering 
anything,  either  "  practically  "  or  theoretically. 

Dr.  Wace  (Nineteenth  Century,  March,  p.  363)  states 
that  he  derives  the  above  citation  from  the  preface  to  the 
loth  edition  of  the  Vie  de  Jesus.  My  copy  of  Les  Evangiles, 
dated  1877,  contains  a  list  of  Kenan's  (Euvres  Completes,  at 
the  head  of  which  I  find  Vie  de  Jesus,  15e  edition.  It  is, 
therefore,  a  later  work  than  the  edition  of  the  Vie  de  Jesus 
which  Dr.  Wace  quotes.  Now  Les  Evangiles,  as  its  name 
implies,  treats  fully  of  the  questions  respecting  the  date  and 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  383 

authorship  of  the  Gospels;  and  any  one  who  desired,  not 
merely  to  use  M.  Kenan's  expressions  for  controversial  pur- 
poses, but  to  give  a  fair  account  of  his  views  in  their  full  sig- 
nificance, would,  I  think,  refer  to  the  later  source. 

If  this  course  had  been  taken,  Dr.  Wace  might  have  found 
some  as  decided  expressions  of  opinion  in  favor  of  Luke's 
authorship  of  the  third  Gospel  as  he  has  discovered  in  The 
Apostles.  I  mention  this  circumstance  because  I  desire  to 
point  out  that,  taking  even  the  strongest  of  Kenan's  state- 
ments, I  am  still  at  a  loss  to  see  how  it  justifies  that  large- 
sounding  phrase,  "  practical  surrender  of  the  adverse  case." 
For,  on  p.  438  of  Les  Evangiles,  Kenan  speaks  of  the  way  in 
which  Luke's  "  excellent  intentions  "  have  led  him  to  torture 
history  in  the  Acts ;  he  declares  Luke  to  be  the  founder  of 
that  "  eternal  fiction  which  is  called  ecclesiastical  history  "  ; 
and,  on  the  preceding  page,  he  talks  of  the  "  myth ''  of  the 
Ascension — with  its  "  mise  en-  scene  voulue."  At  p.  435, 1  find 
"  Luc,  ou  l'auteur  quel  qu'il  soit  du  troisieme  Evangile  ;  "  at 
p.  280,  the  accounts  of  the  Passion,  the  death  and  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  are  said  to  be  "  peu  historiques  "  ;  at  p.  283, 
"  La  valeur  historique  du  troisieme  Evangile  est  surement 
moindre  que  celles  des  deux  premiers."  A  Pyrrhic  sort  of 
victory  for  orthodoxy  this  "  surrender  " !  And,  all  the  while, 
the  scientific  student  of  theology  knows  that  the  more  reason 
there  may  be  to  believe  that  Luke  was  the  companion  of 
Paul,  the  more  doubtful  becomes  his  credibility  if  he  really 
wrote  the  Acts.  For,  in  that  case,  he  could  not  fail  to  have 
been  acquainted  with  Paul's  account  of  the  Jerusalem  con- 
ference, and  he  must  have  consciously  misrepresented  it. 

We  may  next  turn  to  the  essential  part  of  Dr.  Wace's 
citation  {Nineteenth  Century,  p.  365)  touching  the  first  Gos- 
pel : — 

St.  Matthew  evidently  deserves  peculiar  confidence  for  the 
discourses.  Here  are  the  "  oracles " — the  very  notes  taken 
while  the  memory  of  the  instruction  of  Jesus  was  living  and 
definite. 


384:  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

M.  Kenan  here  expresses  the  very  general  opinion  as  to 
the  existence  of  a  collection  of  "logia,"  having  a  different 
origin  from  the  text  in  which  they  are  imbedded,  in  Matthew. 
"  Notes  "  are  somewhat  suggestive  of  a  shorthand  writer,  but 
the  suggestion  is  unintentional,  for  M.  Kenan  assumes  that 
these  "  notes  "  were  taken,  not  at  the  time  of  the  delivery  of 
the  "logia"  but  subsequently,  while  (as  he  assumes)  the 
memory  of  them  was  living  and  definite ;  so  that,  in  this  very 
citation,  M.  Kenan  leaves  open  the  question  of  the  general 
historical  value  of  the  first  Gospel,  while  it  is  obvious  that 
the  accuracy  of  "  notes  "  taken,  not  at  the  time  of  delivery, 
but  from  memory,  is  a  matter  about  which  more  than  one 
opinion  may  be  fairly  held.  Moreover,  Kenan  expressly  calls 
attention  to  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing  the  authentic 
"  logia  "  from  later  editions  of  the  same  kind  {Les  Evangiles, 
p.  201).  The  fact  is,  there  is  no  contradiction  here  to  that 
opinion  about  the  first  Gospel  which  is  expressed  in  Les 
Evangiles  (p.  175). 

The  text  of  the  so-called  Matthew  supposes  the  pre-exist- 
ence  of  that  of  Mark,  and  does  little  more  than  complete  it. 
He  completes  it  in  two  fashions— first,  by  the  insertion  of  those 
long  discourses  which  gave  their  chief  value  to  the  Hebrew 
Gospels;  then  by  adding  traditions  of  a  more  modern  forma- 
tion, results  of  successive  developments  of  the  legend,  and  to 
which  the  Christian  consciousness  already  attached  infinite 
value. 

M.  Kenan  goes  on  to  suggest  that  besides  "Mark," 
"  pseudo-Matthew  "  used  an  Aramaic  version  of  the  Gospel 
originally  set  forth  in  that  dialect.  Finally,  as  to  the  second 
Gospel  {Nineteenth  Century,  p.  365) : — 

He  [Mark]  is  full  of  minute  observations,  proceeding,  be- 
yond doubt,  from  an  eye-witness.  There  is  nothing  to  conflict 
with  the  supposition  that  this  eye-witness  .  .  .  was  the  Apostle 
Peter  himself,  as  Papias  has  it. 

Let  us  consider  this  citation  by  the  light  of  Les  Evan- 
giles : — 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  385 

This  work,  although  composed  after  the  death  of  Peter,  was, 
in  a  sense,  the  work  of  Peter;  it  represents  the  way  in  which 
Peter  was  accustomed  to  relate  the  life  of  Jesus  (p.  116). 

M.  Renan  goes  on  to  say  that,  as  an  historical  document, 
the  Gospel  of  Mark  has  a  great  superiority  (p.  116) ;  but 
Mark  has  a  motive  for  omitting  the  discourses,  and  he  at- 
taches a  "puerile  importance"  to  miracles  (p.  117).  The 
Gospel  of  Mark  is  less  a  legend  than  a  biography  written 
with  credulity  (p.  118).  It  would  be  rash  to  say  that  Mark 
has  not  been  interpolated  and  retouched  (p.  120). 

If  any  one  thinks  that  I  have  not  been  warranted  in 
drawing  a  sharp  distinction  between  "  scientific  theologians  " 
and  "counsels  for  creeds";  or  that  my  warning  against  the 
too  ready  acceptance  of  certain  declarations  as  to  the  state  of 
biblical  criticism  was  needless ;  or  that  my  anxiety  as  to  the 
sense  of  the  word  "  practical "  was  superfluous  ;  let  him  com- 
pare the  statement  that  M.  Renan  has  made  a  "  practical 
surrender  of  the  adverse  case  "  with  the  facts  just  set  forth. 
For  what  is  the  adverse  case  ?  The  question,  as  Dr.  Wace 
puts  it,  is,  "  It  may  be  asked  how  far  can  we  rely  on  the  ac- 
counts we  possess  of  our  Lord's  teaching  on  these  subjects." 
It  will  be  obvious  that  M.  Renan's  statements  amount  to  an 
adverse  answer — to  a  "  practical "  denial  that  any  great  re- 
liance can  be  placed  on  these  accounts.  He  does  not  believe 
that  Matthew,  the  apostle,  wrote  the  first  Gospel ;  he  does 
not  profess  to  know  who  is  responsible  for  the  collection  of 
"  logia,"  or  how  many  of  them  are  authentic ;  though  he 
calls  the  second  Gospel  the  most  historical,  he  points  out 
that  it  is  written  with  credulity,  and  may  have  been  inter- 
polated and  retouched ;  and,  as  to  the  author,  "  quel  qu'il 
soit,"  of  the  third  Gospel,  who  is  to  "  rely  on  the  accounts  " 
of  a  writer  who  deserves  the  cavalier  treatment  which 
"  Luke  "  meets  with  at  M.  Renan's  hands  ? 

I  repeat  what  I  have  already  more  than  once  said,  that 
the  question  of  the  age  and  the  authorship  of  the  Gospels  has 
not,  in  my  judgment,  the  importance  which  is  so  commonly 


386  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

assigned  to  it ;  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  reports,  even 
of  eye  witnesses,  would  not  suffice  to  justify  belief  in  a  large 
and  essential  part  of  their  contents ;  on  the  contrary,  these 
reports  would  discredit  the  witnesses.  The  Gadarene  mir- 
acle, for  example,  is  so  extremely  improbable,  that  the  fact 
of  its  being  reported  by  three,  even  independent,  authorities 
could  not  justify  belief  in  it  unless  we  had  the  clearest  evi- 
dence as  to  their  capacity  as  observers  and  as  interpreters  of 
their  observations.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  three  authori- 
ties are  not  independent ;  that  they  have  simply  adopted  a 
legend,  of  which  there  were  two  versions ;  and  instead  of 
their  proving  its  truth,  it  suggests  their  superstitious  credu- 
lity ;  so  that  if  "  Matthew,"  "  Mark,"  and  "  Luke  "  are  really 
responsible  for  the  Gospels,  it  is  not  the  better  for  the  Gad- 
arene story,  but  the  worse  for  them. 

A  wonderful  amount  of  controversial  capital  has  been 
made  out  of  my  assertion  in  the  note  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred, as  an  obiter  dictum  of  no  consequence  to  my  argu- 
ment, that  if  Kenan's  work  *  were  non-extant,  the  main  re- 
sults of  biblical  criticism,  as  set  forth  in  the  works  of  Strauss, 
Baur,  Eeuss,  and  Volkmar,  for  example,  would  not  be  sensi- 
bly affected.  I  thought  I  had  explained  it  satisfactorily  al- 
ready, but  it  seems  that  my  explanation  has  only  exhibited 
still  more  of  my  native  perversity,  so  I  ask  for  one  more 
chance. 

In  the  course  of  the  historical  development  of  any  branch 
of  science,  what  is  universally  observed  is  this :  that  the 
men  who  make  epochs,  and  are  the  real  architects  of  the 
fabric  of  exact  knowledge,  are  those  who  introduce  fruitful 
ideas  or  methods.  As  a  rule,  the  man  who  does  this  pushes 
his  idea,  or  his  method,  too  far ;  or,  if  he  does  not,  his  school 
is  sure  to  do  so,  and  those  who  follow  have  to  reduce  his 
work  to  its  proper  value,  and  assign  it  to  its  place  in  the 

*  I  trust  it  may  not  be  supposed  that  1  undervalue  M.  Renan's 
labors,  or  intended  to  speak  slightingly  of  them. 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  337 

whole.  Not  unfrequently  they,  in  their  turn,  overdo  the 
critical  process,  and,  in  trying  to  eliminate  error,  throw  away 
truth. 

Thus,  as  I  said,  Linnaeus,  Buffon,  Cuvier,  Lamarck,  really 
"set  forth  the  results"  of  a  developing  science,  although 
they  often  heartily  contradict  one  another.  Notwithstand- 
ing this  circumstance,  modern  classificatory  method  and 
nomenclature  have  largely  grown  out  of  the  work  of  Lin- 
naeus ;  the  modern  conception  of  biology,  as  a  science,  and  of 
its  relation  to  climatology,  geography,  and  geology,  are  as 
largely  rooted  in  the  results  of  the  labors  of  Buffon ;  com- 
parative anatomy  and  palaeontology  owe  a  vast  debt  to 
Cuvier's  results ;  while  invertebrate  zoology  and  the  revival 
of  the  idea  of  evolution  are  intimately  dependent  on  the  re- 
sults of  the  work  of  Lamarck.  In  other  words,  the  main 
results  of  biology  up  to  the  early  years  of  this  century  are  to 
be  found  in,  or  spring  out  of,  the  works  of  these  men. 

So,  if  I  mistake  not,  Strauss,  if  he  did  not  originate  the 
idea  of  taking  the  mythopoeic  faculty  into  account  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Gospel  narratives,  and  though  he  may  have 
exaggerated  the  influence  of  that  faculty,  obliged  scientific 
theology  hereafter  to  take  that  element  into  serious  consider- 
ation ;  so  Baur,  in  giving  prominence  to  the  cardinal  fact  of 
the  divergence  of  the  Nazarene  and  Pauline  tendencies  in 
the  primitive  Church;  so  Eeuss,  in  setting  a  marvelous 
example  of  the  cool  and  dispassionate  application  of  the 
principles  of  scientific  criticism  over  the  whole  field  of 
Scripture ;  so  Volkmar,  in  his  clear  and  forcible  statement 
of  the  Nazarene  limitations  of  Jesus,  contributed  results  of 
permanent  value  in  scientific  theology.  I  took  these  names 
as  they  occurred  to  me.  Undoubtedly,  I  might  have  advan- 
tageously added  to  them ;  perhaps  I  might  have  made  a  better 
selection.  But  it  really  is  absurd  to  try  to  make  out  that  I 
did  not  know  that  these  writers  widely  disagree ;  and  I  be- 
lieve that  no  scientific  theologian  will  deny  that,  in  princi- 
ple, what  I  have  said  is  perfectly  correct.    Ecclesiastical 


388  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

advocates,  of  course,  can  not  be  expected  to  take  this  view 
of  the  matter.  To  them,  these  mere  seekers  after  truth,  in 
so  far  as  their  results  are  unfavorable  to  the  creed  the  clerics 
have  to  support,  are  more  or  less  "  infidels,"  or  favorers  of 
"infidelity";  and  the  only  thing  they  care  to  see,  or  proba- 
bly can  see,  is  the  fact  that,  in  a  great  many  matters,  the 
truth-seekers  differ  from  one  another,  and  therefore  can 
easily  be  exhibited  to  the  public,  as  if  they  did  nothing  else ; 
as  if  any  one  who  referred  to  their  having,  each  and  all,  con- 
tributed his  share  to  the  results  of  theological  science,  was 
merely  showing  his  ignorance ;  and  as  if  a  charge  of  incon- 
sistency could  be  based  on  the  fact  that  he  himself  often 
disagrees  with  what  they  say.  I  have  never  lent  a  shadow  of 
foundation  to  the  assumption  that  I  am  a  follower  of  either 
Strauss,  or  Bauer,  or  Eeuss,  or  Volkmar,  or  Kenan ;  my  debt 
to  these  eminent  men — so  far  my  superiors  in  theological 
knowledge — is,  indeed,  great ;  yet  it  is  not  for  their  opin- 
ions, but  for  those  I  have  been  able  to  form  for  myself,  by 
their  help. 

In  Agnosticism :  a  Rejoinder  (p.  484),  I  have  referred  to 
the  difficulties  under  which  those  professors  of  the  science 
of  theology,  whose  tenure  of  their  posts  depends  on  the  re- 
sults of  their  investigations,  must  labor ;  and,  in  a  note,  I 
add — 

Imagine  that  all  our  chairs  of  Astronomy  had  been  founded 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  that  their  incumbents  were 
bound  to  sign  Ptolemaic  articles.  In  that  case,  with  every  re- 
spect for  the  efforts  of  persons  thus  hampered  to  attain  and 
expound  the  truth,  I  think  men  of  common  sense  would  go 
elsewhere  to  learn  astronomy. 

I  did  not  write  this  paragraph  without  a  knowledge  that 
its  sense  would  be  open  to  the  kind  of  perversion  which  it 
has  suffered ;  but,  if  that  was  clear,  the  necessity  for  the 
statement  was  still  clearer.  It  is  my  deliberate  opinion :  I 
reiterate  it ;  and  I  say  that,  in  my  judgment,  it  is  extremely 
inexpedient  that  any  subject  which   calls  itself  a  science 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY.  389 

should  be  intrusted  to  teachers  who  are  debarred  from  freely 
following  out  scientific  methods  to  their  legitimate  conclu- 
sions, whatever  those  conclusions  may  be.  If  I  may  borrow 
a  phrase  paraded  at  the  Church  Congress,  I  think  it  "  ought 
to  be  unpleasant "  for  any  man  of  science  to  find  himself  in 
the  position  of  such  a  teacher. 

Human  nature  is  not  altered  by  seating  it  in  a  professo- 
rial chair,  even  of  theology.  I  have  very  little  doubt  that  if, 
in  the  year  1859,  the  tenure  of  my  office  had  depended  upon 
my  adherence  to  the  doctrines  of  Cuvier,  the  objections  to 
those  set  forth  in  the  Origin  of  Species  would  have  had  a 
halo  of  gravity  about  them  that,  being  free  to  teach  what  I 
pleased,  I  failed  to  discover.  And,  in  making  that  state- 
ment, it  does  not  appear  to  me  that  I  am  confessing  that  I 
should  have  been  debarred  by  "selfish  interests"  from 
making  candid  inquiry,  or  that  I  should  have  been  biased 
by  "  sordid  motives."  I  hope  that  even  such  a  fragment  of 
moral  sense  as  may  remain  in  an  ecclesiastical  "infidel" 
might  have  got  me  through  the  difficulty ;  but  it  would  be 
unworthy  to  deny  or  disguise  the  fact  that  a  very  serious 
difficulty  must  have  been  created  for  me  by  the  nature  of 
my  tenure.  And  let  it  be  observed  that  the  temptation,  in 
my  case,  would  have  been  far  slighter  than  in  that  of  a  pro- 
fessor of  theology ;  whatever  biological  doctrine  I  had  repu- 
diated, nobody  I  cared  for  would  have  thought  the  worse  of 
me  for  so  doing.  No  scientific  journals  would  have  howled 
me  down,  as  the  religious  newspapers  howled  down  my  too 
honest  friend,  the  late  Bishop  of  Natal ;  nor  would  my  col- 
leagues of  the  Eoyal  Society,  have  turned  their  backs  upon 
me,  as  his  episcopal  colleagues  boycotted  him. 

I  say  these  facts  are  obvious,  and  that  it  is  wholesome 
and  needful  that  they  should  be  stated.  It  is  in  the  inter- 
ests of  theology,  if  it  be  a  science,  and  it  is  in  the  interests  of 
those  teachers  of  theology  who  desire  to  be  something  better 
than  counsel  for  creeds,  that  it  should  be  taken  to  heart. 
The  seeker  after  theological  truth  and  that  only,  will  no 


390  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

more  suppose  that  I  have  insulted  him,  than  the  prisoner 
who  works  in  fetters  will  try  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  me,  if 
I  suggest  that  he  would  get  on  better  if  the  fetters  were 
knocked  off ;  unless  indeed,  as  it  is  said  does  happen  in  the 
course  of  long  captivities,  that  the  victim  at  length  ceases  to 
feel  the  weight  of  his  chains,  or  even  takes  to  hugging  them, 
as  if  they  were  honorable  ornaments.* 

*  To-day's  Times  contains  a  report  of  a  remarkable  speech  by 
Prince  Bismarck,  in  which  he  tells  the  Reichstag  that  he  has  long 
given  up  investing  in  foreign  stock,  lest  so  doing  should  mislead  his 
judgment  in  his  transactions  with  foreign  states.  Does  this  declara- 
tion prove  that  the  Chancellor  accuses  himself  of  being  "  sordid "  and 
"  selfish,"  or  does  it  not  rather  show  that,  even  in  dealing  with  himself, 
he  remains  the  man  of  realities  ? 


XIII. 

THE   LIGHTS   OF  THE   CHUKCH  AND    THE 
LIGHT   OF   SCIENCE. 

There  are  three  ways  of  regarding  any  account  of  past 
occurrences,  whether  delivered  to  us  orally  or  recorded  in 
writing. 

The  narrative  may  be  exactly  true.  That  is  to  say,  the 
words,  taken  in  their  natural  sense,  and  interpreted  accord- 
ing to  the  rules  of  grammar,  may  convey  to  the  mind  of  the 
hearer,  or  of  the  reader,  an  idea  precisely  correspondent  with 
one  which  would  have  remained  in  the  mind  of  a  witness. 
For  example,  the  statement  that  King  Charles  the  First  was 
beheaded  at  Whitehall  on  the  30th  day  of  January,  1649,  is 
as  exactly  true  as  any  proposition  in  mathematics  or  physics ; 
no  one  doubts  that  any  person  of  sound  faculties,  properly 
placed,  who  was  present  at  Whitehall  throughout  that  day, 
and  who  used  his  eyes,  would  have  seen  the  King's  head  cut 
off;  and  that  there  would  have  remained  in  his  mind  an 
idea  of  that  occurrence  which  he  would  have  put  into  words 
of  the  same  value  as  those  which  we  use  to  express  it. 

Or  the  narrative  may  be  partly  true  and  partly  false. 
Thus,  some  histories  of  the  time  tell  us  what  the  King  said, 
and  what  Bishop  Juxon  said ;  or  report  royalist  conspiracies 
to  effect  a  rescue ;  or  detail  the  motives  which  induced  the 
chiefs  of  the  Commonwealth  to  resolve  that  the  King  should 
die.  One  account  declares  that  the  King  knelt  at  a  high 
block,  another  that  he  lay  down  with  his  neck  on  a  mere 
plank.     And  there  are  contemporary  pictorial  representa- 


392  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

tions  of  both  these  modes  of  procedure.  Such  narratives, 
while  veracious  as  to  the  main  event,  may  and  do  exhibit  va- 
rious degrees  of  unconscious  and  conscious  misrepresenta- 
tion, suppression,  and  invention,  till  they  become  hardly  dis- 
tinguishable from  pure  fictions.  Thus,  they  present  a  tran- 
sition to  narratives  of  a  third  class,  in  which  the  fictitious 
element  predominates.  Here,  again,  there  are  all  imaginable 
gradations,  from  such  works  as  Defoe's  quasi-historical  ac- 
count of  the  Plague  year,  which  probably  gives  a  truer  con- 
ception of  that  dreadful  time  than  any  authentic  history, 
through  the  historical  novel,  drama,  and  epic  to  the  purely 
phantasmal  creations  of  imaginative  genius,  such  as  the  old 
Arabian  Nights,  or  the  modern  Shaving  of  Shagpat.  It  is 
not  strictly  needful  for  my  present  purpose  that  I  should 
say  anything  about  narratives  which  are  professedly  fictitious. 
Yet  it  may  be  well,  perhaps,  if  I  disclaim  any  intention  of 
derogating  from  their  value,  when  I  insist  upon  the  para- 
mount necessity  of  recollecting  that  there  is  no  sort  of  rela- 
tion between  the  ethical,  or  the  aesthetic,  or  even  the  scien- 
tific importance  of  such  works,  and  their  worth  as  historical 
documents.  Unquestionably,  to  the  poetic  artist,  or  even  to 
the  student  of  psychology,  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  may  be  bet- 
ter instructors  than  all  the  books  of  a  wilderness  of  professors 
of  aesthetics  or  of  moral  philosophy.  But,  as  evidence  of  oc- 
currences in  Denmark,  or  in  Scotland,  at  the  times  and 
places  indicated,  they  are  out  of  court ;  the  profoundest  ad- 
miration for  them,  the  deepest  gratitude  for  their  influence, 
are  consistent  with  the  knowledge  that,  historically  speaking, 
they  are  worthless  fables,  in  which  any  foundation  of  reality 
that  may  exist  is  submerged  beneath  the  imaginative  super- 
structure. 

At  present,  however,  I  am  not  concerned  to  dwell  upon 
the  importance  of  fictitious  literature  and  the  immensity  of 
the  work  which  it  has  effected  in  the  education  of  the  human 
race.  I  propose  to  deal  with  the  much  more  limited  in- 
quiry :  Are  there  two  other  classes  of  consecutive  narratives 


LIGHTS  OP  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.     393 

(as  distinct  from  statements  of  individual  facts),  or  only  one? 
Is  there  any  known  historical  work  which  is  throughout  ex- 
actly true,  or  is  there  not  ?  In  the  case  of  the  great  majority 
of  histories  the  answer  is  not  doubtful :  they  are  all  only 
partially  true.  Even  those  venerable  works  which  bear  the 
names  of  some  of  the  greatest  of  ancient  Greek  and  Eoman 
writers,  and  which  have  been  accepted  by  generation  after 
generation,  down  to  modern  times,  as  stores  of  unquestiona- 
ble truth,  have  been  compelled  by  scientific  criticism,  after 
a  long  battle,  to  descend  to  the  common  level,  and  to  con- 
fess to  a  large  admixture  of  error.  I  might  fairly  take  this 
for  granted ;  but  it  may  be  well  that  I  should  intrench  my- 
self behind  the  very  apposite  words  of  a  historical  authority 
who  is  certainly  not  obnoxious  to  even  a  suspicion  of  skep- 
tical tendencies. 

Time  was — and  that  not  very  long  ago — when  all  the  re- 
lations of  ancient  authors  concerning  the  old  world  were  re- 
ceived with  a  ready  belief;  and  an  unreasoning  and  uncritical 
faith  accepted  with  equal  satisfaction  the  narrative  of  the  cam- 
paigns of  Caesar  and  of  the  doings  of  Romulus,  the  account  of 
Alexander's  marches  and  of  the  conquests  of  Semiramis.  We 
can  most  of  us  remember  when,  in  this  country,  the  whole 
story  of  regal  Rome,  and  even  the  legend  of  the  Trojan  set- 
tlement in  Latium,  were  seriously  placed  before  boys  as  his- 
tory, and  discoursed  of  as  unhesitatingly  and  in  as  dogmatic  a 
tone  as  the  tale  of  the  Catiline  Conspiracy  or  the  Conquest  of 
Britain.  .  .  . 

But  all  this  is  now  changed.  The  last  century  has  seen  the 
birth  and  growth  of  a  new  science — the  Science  of  Historical 
Criticism.  ...  The  whole  world  of  profane  history  has  been 
revolutionized.  .  .  .* 

If  these  utterances  were  true  when  they  fell  from  the 
lips  of  a  Bampton  lecturer  in  1859,  with  how  much  greater 

*  Bampton  Lectures  (1859),  on  "  The  Historical  Evidences  of  the 
Truth  of  the  Scripture  Records  stated  anew,  with  Special  Reference  to 
the  Doubts  and  Discoveries  of  Modern  Times,"  by  the  Rev.  G.  Rawlin- 
son,  M.  A.,  pp.  5-6. 


394  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

force  do  they  appeal  to  us  now,  when  the  immense  labors  of 
the  generation  now  passing  away  constitute  one  vast  illustra- 
tion of  the  power  and  fruitfulness  of  scientific  methods  of 
investigation  in  history,  no  less  than  in  all  other  departments 
of  knowledge. 

At  the  present  time,  I  suppose,  there  is  no  one  who 
doubts  that  histories  which  appertain  to  any  other  people 
than  the  Jews,  and  their  spiritual  progeny  in  the  first  cent- 
ury, fall  within  the  second  class  of  the  three  enumerated. 
Like  Goethe's  Autobiography,  they  might  all  be  entitled 
"Wahrheit  und  Dichtung "— "  Truth  and  Fiction."  The 
proportion  of  the  two  constituents  changes  indefinitely ;  and 
the  quality  of  the  fiction  varies  through  the  whole  gamut  of 
unveracity.  But  "Dichtung"  is  always  there.  For  the 
most  acute  and  learned  of  historians  can  not  remedy  the  im- 
perfections of  his  sources  of  information ;  nor  can  the  most 
impartial  wholly  escape  the  influence  of  the  "  personal  equa- 
tion "  generated  by  his  temperament  and  by  his  education. 
Therefore,  from  the  narratives  of  Herodotus  to  those  set 
forth  in  yesterday's  Times,  all  history  is  to  be  read  subject  to 
the  warning  that  fiction  has  its  share  therein.  The  modern 
vast  development  of  fugitive  literature  can  not  be  the  un- 
mitigated evil  that  some  do  vainly  say  it  is,  since  it  has  put 
an  end  to  the  popular  delusion  of  less  press-ridden  times, 
that  what  appears  in  print  must  be  true.  We  should  rather 
hope  that  some  beneficent  influence  may  create  among  the 
erudite  a  like  healthy  suspicion  of  manuscripts  and  inscrip- 
tions, however  ancient ;  for  a  bulletin  may  lie,  even  though 
it  be  written  in  cuneiform  characters.  Hotspur's  starling, 
that  was  to  be  taught  to  speak  nothing  but  "  Mortimer  "  into 
the  ears  of  King  Henry  the  Fourth,  might  be  a  useful  in- 
mate of  every  historian's  library,  if  "  Fiction  "  was  substituted 
for  the  name  of  Harry  Percy's  friend. 

But  it  was  the  chief  object  of  the  lecturer  to  the  congre- 
gation gathered  in  St.  Mary's,  Oxford,  thirty-one  years  ago, 
to  prove  to  them,  by  evidence  gathered  with  no  little  labor 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    395 

and  marshaled  with  much  skill,  that  one  group  of  historical 
works  was  exempt  from  the  general  rule ;  and  that  the  narra- 
tives contained  in  the  canonical  Scriptures  are  free  from  any 
admixture  of  error.  With  justice  and  candor,  the  lecturer  im- 
presses upon  his  hearers  that  the  special  distinction  of  Chris- 
tianity, among  the  religions  of  the  world,  lies  in  its  claim  to 
be  historical ;  to  be  surely  founded  upon  events  which  have 
happened,  exactly  as  they  are  declared  to  have  happened  in 
its  sacred  books ;  which  are  true,  that  is,  in  the  sense  that  the 
statement  about  the  execution  of  Charles  the  First  is  true. 
Further,  it  is  affirmed  that  the  New  Testament  presupposes 
the  historical  exactness  of  the  Old  Testament ;  that  the  points 
of  contact  of  "  sacred  "  and  "  profane  "  history  are  innumer- 
able ;  and  that  the  demonstration  of  the  falsity  of  the  He- 
brew records,  especially  in  regard  to  those  narratives  which 
are  assumed  to  be  true  in  the  New  Testament,  would  be  fatal 
to  Christian  theology. 

My  utmost  ingenuity  does  not  enable  me  to  discover  a 
flaw  in  the  argument  thus  briefly  summarized.  I  am  fairly 
at  a  loss  to  comprehend  how  any  one,  for  a  moment,  can  doubt 
that  Christian  theology  must  stand  or  fall  with  the  historical 
trustworthiness  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures.  The  very  concep- 
tion of  the  Messiah,  or  Christ,  is  inextricably  interwoven  with 
Jewish  history ;  the  identification  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  with 
that  Messiah  rests  upon  the  interpretation  of  passages  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  which  have  no  evidential  value  unless  they 
possess  the  historical  character  assigned  to  them.  If  the  cove- 
nant with  Abraham  was  not  made ;  if  circumcision  and  sac- 
rifices were  not  ordained  by  Jahveh ;  if  the  "  ten  words " 
were  not  written  by  God's  hand  on  the  stone  tables ;  if  Abra- 
ham is  more  or  less  a  mythical  hero,  such  as  Theseus ;  the 
story  of  the  Deluge  a  fiction ;  that  of  the  Fall  a  legend ;  and 
that  of  the  Creation  the  dream  of  a  seer ;  if  all  these  definite 
and  detailed  narratives  of  apparently  real  events  have  no  more 
value  as  history  than  have  the  stories  of  the  regal  period  of 
Rome — what  is  to  be  said  about  the  Messianic  doctrine,  which 


39  q  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

is  so  much  less  clearly  enunciated?  And  what  about  the 
authority  of  the  writers  of  the  books  of  the  New  Testament, 
who,  on  this  theory,  have  not  merely  accepted  flimsy  fictions 
for  solid  truths,  but  have  built  the  very  foundations  of  Chris- 
tian dogma  upon  legendary  quicksands  ? 

But  these  may  be  said  to  be  merely  the  carpings  of  that 
carnal  reason  which  the  profane  call  common  sense ;  I  hasten, 
therefore,  to  bring  up  the  forces  of  unimpeachable  ecclesi- 
astical authority  in  support  of  my  position.  In  a  sermon 
preached  last  December,  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,*  Canon 
Liddon  declares : — 

For  Christians  it  will  be  enough  to  know  that  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  set  the  seal  of  His  infallible  sanction  on  the  whole 
of  the  Old  Testament.  He  found  the  Hebrew  Canon  as  we  have 
it  in  our  hands  to-day,  and  he  treated  it  as  an  authority  which 
was  above  discussion.  Nay  more :  He  went  out  of  His  way — if 
we  may  reverently  speak  thus — to  sanction  not  a  few  portions 
of  it  which  modern  skepticism  rejects.  When  he  would  warn 
His  hearers  against  the  dangers  of  spiritual  relapse,  He  bids 
them  remember  "  Lot's  wife."  t  When  He  would  point  out  how 
worldly  engagements  may  blind  the  soul  to  a  coming  judgment. 
He  reminds  them  how  men  ate,  and  drank,  and  married,  and 
were  given  in  marriage,  until  the  day  that  Noah  entered  into 
the  ark,  and  the  Flood  came  and  destroyed  them  all.  J  If  He 
would  put  His  finger  on  a  fact  in  past  Jewish  history  which,  by 
its  admitted  reality,  would  warrant  belief  in  His  own  coming 
Eesurrection,  He  points  to  Jonah's  being  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  whale's  belly  (p.  23). # 

The  preacher  proceeds  to  brush  aside  the  common — I  had 
almost  said  vulgar — apologetic  pretext  that  Jesus  was  using 
ad  hominem   arguments,   or   "  accommodating "   his  better 

*  The  Worth  of  the  Old  Testament,  a  Sermon  preached  in  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral  on  the  Second  Sunday  in  Advent,  8th  Dec,  1889,  by  H.  P. 
Liddon,  D.D.,  D.C.L.,  Canon  and  Chancellor  of  St.  Paul's.  Second  edi- 
tion, revised  and 'with  a  new  preface,  1890. 

f  St.  Luke  xvii.  32.  %  I°id.  27.  #  St.  Matt.  xii.  40.       - 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    397 

knowledge  to  popular  ignorance,  as  well  as  to  point  out  the 
inadmissibility  of  the  other  alternative,  that  he  shared  the 
popular  ignorance.  And  to  those  who  hold  the  latter  view 
sarcasm,  is  dealt  out  with  no  niggard  hand. 

But  they  will  find  it  difficult  to  persuade  mankind  that,  if 
He  could  be  mistaken  on  a  matter  of  such  strictly  religious  im- 
portance as  the  value  of  the  sacred  literature  of  His  countrymen, 
He  can  be  safely  trusted  about  anything  else.  The  trustworthi- 
ness of  the  Old  Testament  is,  in  fact,  inseparable  from  the  trust- 
worthiness of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  and  if  we  believe  that  He 
is  the  true  Light  of  the  World,  we  shall  close  our  ears  against 
suggestions  impairing  the  credit  of  those  Jewish  Scriptures 
which  have  received  the  stamp  of  His  Divine  authority  (p.  25). 

Moreover,  I  learn  from  the  public  journals  that  a  brilliant 
and  sharply-cut  view  of  orthodoxy,  of  like  hue  and  pattern, 
was  only  the  other  day  exhibited  in  that  great  theological 
kaleidoscope,  the  pulpit  of  St.  Mary's,  recalling  the  time  so 
long  past  by,  when  a  Bampton  lecturer,  in  the  same  place,  per- 
formed the  unusual  feat  of  leaving  the  faith  of  old-fashioned 
Christians  undisturbed. 

Yet  many  things  have  happened  in  the  intervening  thirty- 
one  years.  The  Bampton  lecturer  of  1859  had  to  grapple 
only  with  the  infant  Hercules  of  historical  criticism ;  and  he 
is  now  a  full-grown  athlete,  bearing  on  his  shoulders  the 
spoils  of  all  the  lions  that  have  stood  in  his  path.  Surely  a 
martyr's  courage,  as  well  as  a  martyr's  faith,  is  needed  by  any 
one,  who  at  this  time,  is  prepared  to  stand  by  the  following 
plea  for  the  veracity  of  the  Pentateuch  : — 

Adam,  according  to  the  Hebrew  original,  was  for  243  years 
contemporary  with  Methuselah,  who  conversed  for  a  hundred 
years  with  Shem.  Shem  was  for  fifty  years  contemporary  with 
Jacob,  who  probably  saw  Jochebed,  Moses's  mother.  Thus, 
Moses  might  by  oral  tradition  have  obtained  the  history  of 
Abraham,  and  even  of  the  Deluge,  at  third  hand;  and  that  of 
the  Temptation  and  the  Fall  at  fifth  hand. 

If  it  be  granted— as  it  seems  to  be — that  the  great  and  stir- 


398  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ring  events  in  a  nation's  life  will,  under  ordinary  circumstances, 
be  remembered  (apart  from  all  written  memorials)  for  the  space 
of  150  years,  being  handed  down  through  five  generations,  it 
must  be  allowed  (even  on  mere  human  grounds)  that  the  ac- 
count which  Moses  gives  of  the  Temptation  and  the  Fall  is  to  be 
depended  upon,  if  it  passed  through  no  more  than  four  hands 
between  him  and  Adam.* 

If  "  the  trustworthiness  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  "  is  to 
stand  or  fall  with  the  belief  in  the  sudden  transmutation  of 
the  chemical  components  of  a  woman's  body  into  sodium 
chloride,  or  on  the  "  admitted  reality  "  of  Jonah's  ejection, 
safe  and  sound,  on  the  shores  of  the  Levant,  after  three  days' 
sea-journey  in  the  stomach  of  a  gigantic  marine  animal,  what 
possible  pretext  can  there  be  for  even  hinting  a  doubt  as  to 
the  precise  truth  of  the  longevity  attributed  to  the  Patri- 
archs ?  Who  that  has  swallowed  the  camel  of  Jonah's  jour- 
ney will  be  guilty  of  the  affectation  of  straining  at  such  a 
historical  gnat — nay  midge — as  the  supposition  that  the 
mother  of  Moses  was  told  the  story  of  the  Flood  by  Jacob ; 
who  had  it  straight  from  Shem ;  who  was  on  friendly  terms 
with  Methuselah  ;  who  knew  Adam  quite  well  ? 

Yet,  by  the  strange  irony  of  things,  the  illustrious  brother 
of  the  divine  who  propounded  this  remarkable  theory,  has 
been  the  guide  and  foremost  worker  of  that  band  of  investi- 
gators of  the  records  of  Assyria  and  of  Babylonia,  who  have 
opened  to  our  view,  not  merely  a  new  chapter,  but  a  new 
volume  of  primeval  history,  relating  to  the  very  people  who 
have  the  most  numerous  points  of  contact  with  the  life  of  the 
ancient  Hebrews.  Now,  whatever  imperfections  may  yet  ob- 
scure the  full  value  of  the  Mesopotamian  records,  everything 
that  has  been  clearly  ascertained  tends  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  assignment  of  no  more  than  4,000  years  to  the  period  be- 
tween the  time  of  the  origin  of  mankind  and  that  of  Augus- 
tus Caesar,  is  wholly   inadmissible.     Therefore  the  Biblical 

*  Bampton  Lectures,  1859,  pp.  50-51. 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    399 

chronology,  which  Canon  Kawlinson  trusted  so  implicitly 
in  1859,  is  relegated  by  all  serious  critics  to  the  domain  of 
fable. 

But  if  scientific  method,  operating  in  the  region  of  history, 
of  philology,  of  archaeology,  in  the  course  of  the  last  thirty 
or  forty  years,  has  become  thus  formidable  to  the  theological 
dogmatist,  what  may  not  be  said  about  scientific  method 
working  in  the  province  of  physical  science  ?  For,  if  it  be 
true  that  the  Canonical  Scriptures  have  innumerable  points 
of  contact  with  civil  history,  it  is  no  less  true  that  they  have 
almost  as  many  with  natural  history ;  and  their  accuracy  is 
put  to  the  test  as  severely  by  the  latter  as  by  the  former.  The 
origin  of  the  present  state  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth  is  a 
problem  which  lies  strictly  within  the  province  of  physical 
science ;  so  is  that  of  the  origin  of  man  among  living  things ; 
so  is  that  of  the  physical  changes  which  the  earth  has  under- 
gone since  the  origin  of  man ;  so  is  that  of  the  origin  of  the 
various  races  and  nations  of  men,  with  all  their  varieties  of 
language  and  physical  conformation.  Whether  the  earth 
moves  round  the  sun  or  the  contrary ;  whether  the  bodily  and 
mental  diseases  of  men  and  animals  are  caused  by  evil  spirits 
or  not ;  whether  there  is  such  an  agency  as  witchcraft  or  not 
— all  these  are  purely  scientific  questions  ;  and  to  all  of  them 
the  canonical  Scriptures  profess  to  give  true  answers.  And 
though  nothing  is  more  common  than  the  assumption  that 
these  books  come  into  conflict  only  with  the  speculative  part 
of  modern  physical  science,  no  assumption  can  have  less 
foundation. 

The  antagonism  between  natural  knowledge  and  the 
Pentateuch  would  be  as  great  if  the  speculations  of  our  time 
had  never  been  heard  of.  It  arises  out  of  contradiction  upon 
matters  of  fact.  The  books  of  ecclesiastical  authority  declare 
that  certain  events  happened  in  a  certain  fashion ;  the  books 
of  scientific  authority  say  they  did  not.  As  it  seems  that 
this  unquestionable  truth  has  not  yet  penetrated  among  many 
of  those  who  speak  and  write  on  these  subjects,  it  may  be 


400  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

useful  to  give  a  full  illustration  of  it.  And  for  that  purpose 
I  propose  to  deal,  at  some  length,  with  the  narrative  of  the 
]Noachian  Deluge  given  in  Genesis. 

The  Bampton  lecturer  in  1859,  and  the  Canon  of  St. 
Paul's  in  1890,  are  in  full  agreement  that  this  history  is  true, 
in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  denned  historical  truth.  The 
former  is  of  opinion  that  the  account  attributed  to  Berosus 
records  a  tradition — 

not  drawn  from  the  Hebrew  record,  much  less  the  foundation 
of  that  record ;  yet  coinciding  with  it  in  the  most  remarkable 
way.  The  Babylonian  version  it  tricked  out  with  a  few  extra- 
vagancies, as  the  monstrous  size  of  the  vessel  and  the  transla- 
tion of  Xisuthros ;  but  otherwise  it  is  the  Hebrew  history  down 
to  its  minutice  (p.  64). 

Moreover,  correcting  Niebuhr,  the  Bampton  lecturer 
points  out  that  the  narrative  of  Berosus  implies  the  universal- 
ity of  the  Flood. 

It  is  plain  that  the  waters  are  represented  as  prevailing 
above  the  tops  of  the  loftiest  mountains  in  Armenia — a  height 
which  must  have  been  seen  to  involve  the  submersion  of  all 
the  countries  with  which  the  Babylonians  were  acquainted 
(p.  66). 

I  may  remark,  in  passing,  that  many  people  think  the  size 
of  Noah's  ark  "  monstrous,"  considering  the  probable  state  of 
the  art  of  shipbuilding  only  1600  years  after  the  origin  of 
man ;  while  others  are  so  unreasonable  as  to  inquire  why  the 
translation  of  Enoch  is  less  an  "  extravagance  "  than  that  of 
Xisuthros.  It  is  more  important,  however,  to  note  that  the 
universality  of  the  Deluge  is  recognized,  not  merely  as  a  part 
of  the  story,  but  as  a  necessary  consequence  of  some  of  its 
details.  The  latest  exponent  of  Anglican  orthodoxy,  as  we 
have  seen,  insists  upon  the  accuracy  of  the  Pentateuchal  his- 
tory of  the  Flood  in  a  still  more  forcible  manner.  It  is  cited 
as  one  of  those  very  narratives  to  which  the  authority  of  the 


LIGHTS  OP  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    401 

Founder  of  Christianity  is  pledged,  and  upon  the  accuracy  of 
which  "the  trustworthiness  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ"  is 
staked,  just  as  others  have  staked  it  upon  the  truth  of  the 
histories  of  demoniac  possession  in  the  Gospels. 

Now,  when  those  who  put  their  trust  in  scientific  methods 
of  ascertaining  the  truth  in  the  province  of  natural  history 
find  themselves  confronted  and  opposed,  on  their  own  ground, 
by  ecclesiastical  pretensions  to  better  knowledge,  it  is,  un- 
doubtedly, most  desirable  for  them  to  make  sure  that  their 
conclusions,  whatever  they  may  be,  are  well  founded.  And, 
if  they  put  aside  the  unauthorized  interference  with  their 
business  and  relegate  the  Pentateuchal  history  to  the  region 
of  pure  fiction,  they  are  bound  to  assure  themselves  that  they 
do  so  because  the  plainest  teachings  of  Nature  (apart  from  all 
doubtful  speculations),  are  irreconcilable  with  the  assertions 
which  they  reject. 

At  the  present  time,  it  is  difficult  to  persuade  serious 
scientific  inquirers  to  occupy  themselves,  in  any  way,  with 
the  Noachian  Deluge.  They  look  at  you  with  a  smile  and  a 
shrug,  and  say  they  have  more  important  matters  to  attend  to 
than  mere  antiquarian-ism.  But  it  was  not  so  in  my  youth. 
At  that  time,  geologists  and  biologists  could  hardly  follow  to 
the  end  any  path  of  inquiry  without  finding  the  way  blocked 
by  Noah  and  his  ark,  or  by  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis ;  and 
it  was  a  serious  matter,  in  this  country  at  any  rate,  for  a  man 
to  be  suspected  of  doubting  the  literal  truth  of  the  Diluvial 
or  any  other  Pentateuchal  history.  The  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  foundation  of  the  Geological  Club  (in  1824),  was,  if  I 
remember  rightly,  the  last  occasion  on  which  the  late  Sir 
Charles  Lyell  spoke  to  even  so  small  a  public  as  the  members 
of  that  body.  Our  veteran  leader  lighted  up  once  more ;  and, 
referring  to  the  difficulties  which  beset  his  early  efforts  to  cre- 
ate a  rational  science  of  geology,  spoke,  with  his  wonted  clear- 
ness and  vigor,  of  the  social  ostracism  which  pursued  him 
after  the  publication  of  the  Principles  of  Geology,  in  1830, 
on  account  of  the  obvious  tendency  of  that  noble  work  to 
18 


402  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

discredit  the  Pentateuchal  accounts  of  the  Creation  and  the 
Deluge.  If  my  younger  contemporaries  find  this  hard  to  be- 
lieve, I  may  refer  them  to  a  grave  book,  On  the  Doctrine  of 
the  Deluge,  published  eight  years  later,  and  dedicated  by  its 
author  to  his  father,  the  then  Archbishop  of  York.  The  first 
chapter  refers  to  the  treatment  of  the  "  Mosaic  Deluge,"  by 
Dr.  Buckland  and  Mr.  Lyell,  in  the  following  terms : 

Their  respect  for  revealed  religion  has  prevented  them  from 
arraying  themselves  openly  against  the  Scriptural  account  of  it 
— much  less  do  they  deny  its  truth — but  they  are  in  a  great 
hurry  to  escape  from  the  consideration  of  it,  and  evidently 
concur  in  the  opinion  of  Linnaeus,  that  no  proofs  whatever  of 
the  Deluge  are  to  be  discovered  in  the  structure  of  the  earth 
(p.  1). 

And  after  an  attempt  to  reply  to  some  of  LyelPs  argu- 
ments, which  it  would  be  cruel  to  reproduce,  the  writer  con- 
tinues : — 

When,  therefore,  upon  such  slender  grounds,  it  is  determined, 
in  answer  to  those  who  insist  upon  its  universality,  that  the 
Mosaic  Deluge  must  be  considered  a  preternatural  event,  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  philosophical  inquiry ;  not  only  as  to  the 
causes  employed  to  produce  it,  but  as  to  the  effects  most  likely 
to  result  from  it ;  that  determination  wears  an  aspect  of  skepti- 
cism, which,  however  much  soever  it  may  be  unintentional  in 
the  mind  of  the  writer,  yet  can  not  but  produce  an  evil  impres- 
sion on  those,  who  are  already  predisposed  to  carp  and  cavil  at 
the  evidences  of  Revelation  (pp.  8-9). 

The  kindly  and  courteous  writer  of  these  curious  passages 
is  evidently  unwilling  to  make  the  geologists  the  victims  of 
general  opprobrium  by  pressing  the  obvious  consequences  of 
their  teaching  home.  One  is  therefore  pained  to  think  of  the 
feelings  with  which,  if  he  lived  so  long  as  to  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  he  must  have  pe- 
rused the  article  "  Noah,"  written  by  a  dignitary  of  the  Church 
for  that  stardard  compendium  and  published  in  1863.  For 
the  doctrine  of  the  universality  of  the  Deluge  is  therein  alto- 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    4Q3 

gether  given  up ;  and  I  permit  myself  to  hope  that  a  long 
criticism  of  the  story  from  the  point  of  view  of  natural 
science,  with  which,  at  the  request  of  the  learned  theologian 
who  wrote  it,  I  supplied  him,  may,  in  some  degree,  have  con- 
tributed toward  this  happy  result. 

Notwithstanding  diligent  search,  I  have  been  unable  to 
discover  that  the  universality  of  the  Deluge  has  any  defender 
left,  at  least  among  those  who  have  so  far  mastered  the  rudi- 
ments of  natural  knowledge  as  to  be  able  to  appreciate  the 
weight  of  evidence  against  it.  For  example,  when  I  turned 
to  the  Speaker's  Bible,  published  under  the  sanction  of  high 
Anglican  authority,  I  found  the  following  judicial  and  judi- 
cious deliverance,  the  skillful  wording  of  which  may  adorn, 
but  does  not  hide,  the  completeness  of  the  surrender  of  the 
old  teaching : — 

Without  pronouncing  too  hastily  on  any  fair  inferences 
from  the  words  of  Scripture,  we  may  reasonably  say  that  their 
most  natural  interpretation  is,  that  the  whole  race  of  man  had 
become  grievously  corrupted  since  the  faithful  had  intermingled 
with  the  ungodly ;  that  the  inhabited  world  was  consequently 
filled  with  violence,  and  that  God  had  decreed  to  destroy  aU 
mankind  except  one  single  family;  that,  therefore,  all  that  por- 
tion of  the  earth,  perhaps  as  yet  a  very  small  portion,  into  which 
mankind  had  spread  was  overwhelmed  with  water.  The  ark 
was  ordained  to  save  one  faithful  family;  and  lest  that  family, 
on  the  subsidence  of  the  waters,  should  find  the  whole  country 
round  them  a  desert,  a  pair  of  all  the  beasts  of  the  land  and  of 
the  fowls  of  the  air  were  preserved  along  with  them,  and  along 
with  them  went  forth  to  replenish  the  now  desolated  continent. 
The  words  of  Scripture  (confirmed  as  they  are  by  universal  tra. 
dition)  appear  at  least  to  mean  as  much  as  this.  They  do  not 
necessarily  mean  more.* 

In  the  third  edition  of  Kitto's  Cyclopaedia  of  Biblical 
Literature  (1876),  the  article  "Deluge,"  written  by  my 
friend,   the   present   distinguished  head    of   the   Geological 

*  Commentary  on  Genesis,  by  the  Bishop  of  Ely,  p.  77. 


404  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Survey  of  Great  Britain,  extinguishes  the  universality 
doctrine  as  thoroughly  as  might  be  expected  from  its  author- 
ship ;  and,  since  the  writer  of  the  article  "  Noah  "  refers  his 
readers  to  that  entitled  "  Deluge,"  it  is  to  be  supposed,  not- 
withstanding his  generally  orthodox  tone,  that  he  does  not 
dissent  from  its  conclusions.  Again,  the  writers  in  Herzog's 
Real- Ericy  clop  adie  (Bd.  X.  1882)  and  in  Eiehm's  Handwor- 
terbuch  (1884) — both  works  with  a  conservative  leaning — are 
on  the  same  side ;  and  Diestel,*  in  his  full  discussion  of  the 
subject,  remorselessly  rejects  the  universality  doctrine.  Even 
that  stanch  opponent  of  scientific  rationalism — may  I  say 
rationality — Z6ckler,f  flinches  from  a  distinct  defense  of  the 
thesis,  any  opposition  to  which,  well  within  my  recollection, 
was  howled  down  by  the  orthodox  as  mere  "  infidelity."  All 
that,  in  his  sore  straits,  Dr.  Zockler  is  able  to  do,  is  to  pro- 
nounce a  faint  commendation  upon  a  particularly  absurd 
attempt  at  reconciliation,  which  would  make  out  the  Noa- 
chian  Deluge  to  be  a  catastrophe  which  occurred  at  the  end 
of  the  Glacial  Epoch.  This  hypothesis  involves  only  the 
trifle  of  a  physical  revolution  of  which  geology  knows 
nothing ;  and  which,  if  it  secured  the  accuracy  of  the  Penta- 
teuchal  writer  about  the  fact  of  the  Deluge,  would  leave  the 
details  of  his  account  as  irreconcilable  with  the  truths  of  ele- 
mentary physical  science  as  ever.  Thus  I  may  be  permitted 
to  spare  myself  and  my  readers  the  weariness  of  a  recapitula- 
tion of  the  overwhelming  arguments  against  the  universality 
of  the  Deluge,  which  they  will  now  find  for  themselves 
stated,  as  fully  and  forcibly  as  could  be  wished,  by  Anglican 
and  other  theologians,  whose  orthodoxy  and  conservative 
tendencies  have,  hitherto,  been  above  suspicion.  Yet  many 
fully  admit  (and,  indeed,  nothing  can  be  plainer)  that  the 
Pentateuchal  narrator  means  to  convey  that,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  whole  earth  known  to  him  was  inundated  ;  nor  is  it 

*  Die.Sintflut,  1876. 

f  Theologie  und  Naturwissenschaft,  ii.  784-791  (1877). 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    405 

less  obvious  that,  unless  all  mankind,  with  the  exception  of 
Noah  and  his  family,  were  actually  destroyed,  the  references 
to  the  Flood  in  the  New  Testament  are  unintelligible. 

But  I  am  quite  aware  that  the  strength  of  the  demonstra- 
tion that  no  universal  Deluge  ever  took  place  has  produced  a 
change  of  front  in  the  army  of  apologetic  writers.  They 
have  imagined  that  the  substitution  of  the  adjective  "  partial " 
for  "  universal,"  will  save  the  credit  of  the  Pentateuch,  and 
permit  them,  after  all,  without  too  many  blushes,  to  declare 
that  the  progress  of  modern  science  only  strengthens  the 
authority  of  Moses.  Nowhere  have  I  found  the  case  of  the 
advocates  of  this  method  of  escaping  from  the  difficulties  of 
the  actual  position  better  put  than  in  the  lecture  of  Pro- 
fessor Diestel  to  which  I  have  referred.  After  frankly  ad- 
mitting that  the  old  doctrine  of  universality  involves  physical 
impossibilities,  he  continues : — 

All  these  difficulties  fall  away  as  soon  as  we  give  up  the 
universality  of  the  Deluge,  and  imagine  a  partial  flooding  of 
the  earth,  say  in  western  Asia.  But  have  we  a  right  to  do  so? 
The  narrative  speaks  of  " the  whole  earth."  But  what  is  the 
meaning  of  this  expression?  Surely  not  the  whole  surface  of 
the  earth  according  to  the  ideas  of  modern  geographers,  but  at 
most,  according  to  the  conceptions  of  the  Biblical  author.  This 
very  simple  conclusion,  however,  is  never  drawn  by  too  many 
readers  of  the  Bible.  But  one  need  only  cast  one's  eyes  over 
the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis  in  order  to  become  acquainted  with, 
the  geographical  horizon  of  the  Jews.  In  the  north  it  was 
bounded  by  the  Black  Sea  and  the  mountains  of  Armenia; 
extended  toward  the  east  very  little  beyond  the  Tigris;  hardly 
reached  the  apex  of  the  Persian  Gulf;  passed,  then,  through  the 
middle  of  Arabia  and  the  Red  Sea;  went  southward  through 
Abyssinia,  and  then  turned  westward  by  the  frontiers  of  Egypt, 
and  inclosed  the  easternmost  islands  of  the  Mediterranean 
(p.  11). 

The  justice  of  this  observation  must  be  admitted,  no  less 
than  the  further  remark  that,  in  still  earlier  times,  the 
pastoral  Hebrews  very  probably  had  yet  more  restricted 


406  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

notions  of  what  constituted  the  "  whole  earth."  Moreover,  I, 
for  one,  fully  agree  with  Professor  Diestel  that  the  motive,  or 
generative  incident,  of  the  whole  story  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
occasionally  excessive  and  desolating  floods  of  the  Euphrates 
and  the  Tigris. 

Let  us,  provisionally,  accept  the  theory  of  a  partial  del- 
uge, and  try  to  form  a  clear  mental  picture  of  the  occur- 
rence. Let  us  suppose  that,  for  forty  days  and  forty  nights, 
such  a  vast  quantity  of  water  was  poured  upon  the  ground 
that  the  whole  surface  of  Mesopotamia  was  covered  by  water 
to  a  depth  certainly  greater,  probably  much  greater,  than 
fifteen  cubits,  or  twenty  feet  (Gen.  vii.  20).  The  inundation 
prevails  upon  the  earth  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  days ;  and 
then  the  flood  gradually  decreases,  until,  on  the  seventeenth 
day  of  the  seventh  month,  the  ark,  which  had  previously 
floated  on  its  surface,  grounds  upon  the  "  mountains  of 
Ararat "  *  (Gen.  viii.  34).  Then,  as  Diestel  has  acutely 
pointed  out  (Sintflut,  p.  13),  we  are  to  imagine  the  further 
subsidence  of  the  flood  to  take  place  so  gradually  that  it  was 
not  until  nearly  two  months  and  a-half  after  this  time  (that  is 
to  say,  on  the  first  day  of  the  tenth  month)  that  the  "tops  of 
the  mountains  "  became  visible.  Hence  it  follows  that,  if  the 
ark  drew  even  as  much  as  twenty  feet  of  water,  the  level  of 
the  inundation  fell  very  slowly — at  a  rate  of  only  a  few  inches 
a  day — until  the  top  of  the  mountain  on  which  it  rested  be- 
came visible.  This  is  an  amount  of  movement  which,  if  it 
took  place  in  the  sea,  would  be  overlooked  by  ordinary  people 
on  the  shore.  But  the  Mesopotamian  plain  slopes  gently, 
from  an  elevation  of  500  or  600  feet  at  its  northern  end,  to 
the  sea,  at  its  southern  end,  with  hardly  so  much  as  a  notable 
ridge  to  break  its  uniform  flatness,  for  300  to  400  miles. 
These  being  the  conditions  of  the  case,  the  following  inquiry 

*  It  is  very  doubtful  if  this  means  the  region  of  the  Armenian 
Ararat.  More  probably  it  designates  some  part  either  of  the  Kurdish 
range  or  of  its  southeastern  continuation. 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    407 

naturally  presents  itself :  not,  be  it  observed,  as  a  recondite 
problem,  generated  by  modern  speculation,  but  as  a  plain 
suggestion  flowing  out  of  that  very  ordinary  and  archaic 
piece  of  knowledge  that  water  can  not  be  piled  up  in  a  heap, 
like  sand ;  or  that  it  seeks  the  lowest  level.  When,  after  150 
days,  "  the  fountains  also  of  the  deep  and  the  windows  of 
heaven  were  stopped,  and  the  rain  from  heaven  was  re- 
strained "  (Gen.  viii.  2),  what  prevented  the  mass  of  water, 
several,  possibly  very  many,  fathoms  deep,  which  covered, 
say,  the  present  site  of  Bagdad,  from  sweeping  seaward  in  a 
furious  torrent ;  and,  in  a  very  few  hours,  leaving,  not  only 
the  "  tops  of  the  mountains,"  but  the  whole  plain,  save  any 
minor  depressions,  bare  ?  How  could  its  subsidence,  by  any 
possibility,  be  an  affair  of  weeks  and  months? 

And  if  this  difficulty  is  .not  enough,  let  any  one  try  to 
imagine  how  a  mass  of  water  several,  perhaps  very  many, 
fathoms  deep,  could  be  accumulated  on  a  flat  surface  of  land 
rising  well  above  the  sea,  and  separated  from  it  by  no  sort  of 
barrier.  Most  people  know  Lord's  Cricket-ground.  "Would 
it  not  be  an  absurd  contradiction  to  our  common  knowledge 
of  the  properties  of  water  to  imagine  that,  if  all  the  mains  of 
all  the  waterworks  of  London  were  turned  on  to  it,  they  could 
maintain  a  heap  of  water  twenty  feet  deep  over  its  level  sur- 
face ?  Is  it  not  obvious  that  the  water,  whatever  momentary 
accumulation  might  take  place  at  first,  would  not  stop  there, 
but  that  it  would  dash,  like  a  mighty  mill-race,  southward 
down  the  gentle  slope  which  ends  in  the  Thames  ?  And  is  it 
not  further  obvious,  that  whatever  depth  of  water  might  be 
maintained  over  the  cricket-ground  so  long  as  all  the  mains 
poured  on  to  it,  anything  which  floated  there  would  be  speed- 
ily whirled  away  by  the  current,  like  a  cork  in  a  gutter  when 
the  rain  pours  ?  But  if  this  is  so,  then  it  is  no  less  certain 
that  Noah's  deeply  laden,  sailless,  oarless,  and  rudderless 
craft,  if  by  good  fortune  it  escaped  capsizing  in  whirlpools, 
or  having  its  bottom  knocked  into  holes  by  snags  (like  those 
which  prove  fatal  even  to  well-built  steamers  on  the  Missis- 


408  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

sippi  in  our  day),  would  have  speedily  found  itself  a  good 
way  down  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  not  long  after  in  the  Indian 
Ocean,  somewhere  between  Arabia  and  Hindostan.  Even  if, 
eventually,  the  ark  might  have  gone  ashore,  with  other  jet- 
sam and  flotsam,  on  the  coasts  of  Arabia,  or  of  Hindostan,  or 
of  the  Maldives,  or  of  Madagascar,  its  return  to  the  "  mount- 
ains of  Ararat "  would  have  been  a  miracle  more  stupendous 
than  all  the  rest. 

Thus,  the  last  state  of  the  would-be  reconcilers  of  the 
story  of  the  Deluge  with  fact  is  worse  than  the  first.  All 
that  they  have  done  is  to  transfer  the  contradictions  to  estab- 
lished truth  from  the  region  of  science  proper  to  that  of 
common  information  and  common  sense.  For,  really,  the 
assertion  that  the  surface  of  a  body  of  deep  water,  to  which 
no  addition  was  made,  and  which  there  was  nothing  to  stop 
from  running  into  the  sea,  sank  at  the  rate  of  only  a  few 
inches  or  even  feet  a  day,  simply  outrages  the  most  ordinary 
and  familiar  teachings  of  every  man's  daily  experience.  A 
child  may  see  the  folly  of  it. 

In  addition,  I  may  remark  that  the  necessary  assumption 
of  the  "  partial  Deluge  "  hypothesis  (if  it  is  confined  to  Meso- 
potamia) that  the  Hebrew  writer  must  have  meant  low  hills 
when  he  said  "  high  mountains,"  is  quite  untenable.  On  the 
eastern  side  of  the  Mesopotamian  plain,  the  snowy  peaks  of 
the  frontier  ranges  of  Persia  are  visible  from  Bagdad,*  and 
even  the  most  ignorant  herdsmen  in  the  neighborhood  of 
"  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,"  near  its  western  limit,  could  hardly 
have  been  unacquainted  with  the  comparatively  elevated 
plateau  of  the  Syrian  desert  which  lay  close  at  hand.  But, 
surely,  we  must  suppose  the  Biblical  writer  to  be  acquainted 
with  the  highlands  of  Palestine  and  with  the  masses  of  the 
Sinaitic  peninsula,  which  soar  more  than  8,000  feet  above 
the  sea,  if  he  knew  of  no  higher  elevations ;  and,  if  so,  he 

*  So  Reclus  {Nouvelle  Geographic  Universelle,  ix.  388),  but  I  find 
the  statement  doubted  by  an  authority  of  the  first  rank. 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    4Q9 

could  not  well  have  meant  to  refer  to  mere  hillocks  when  he 
said  that  "all  the  high  mountains  which  were  under  the 
whole  heaven  were  covered "  (Genesis  vii.  19).  Even  the 
hill-country  of  Galilee  reaches  an  elevation  of  4,000  feet; 
and  a  flood  which  covered  it  could  by  no  possibility  have 
been  other  than  universal  in  its  superficial  extent.  Water 
really  can  not  be  got  to  stand  at,  say,  4,000  feet  above  the 
sea-level  over  Palestine,  without  covering  the  rest  of  the 
globe  to  the  same  height.  Even  if,  in  the  course  of  Noah's 
six  hundredth  year,  some  prodigious  convulsion  had  sunk 
the  whole  region  inclosed  within  "  the  horizon  of  the  geo- 
graphical knowledge  "  of  the  Israelites  by  that  much,  and 
another  had  pushed  it  up  again,  just  in  time  to  catch  the  ark 
upon  the  "  mountains  of  Ararat,"  matters  are  not  much 
mended.  I  am  afraid  to  think  of  what  would  have  become 
of  a  vessel  so  little  seaworthy  as  the  ark  and  of  its  very  nu- 
merous passengers,  under  the  peculiar  obstacles  to  quiet  flota- 
tion which  such  rapid  movements  of  depression  and  upheaval 
would  have  generated. 

Thus,  in  view,  not,  I  repeat,  of  the  recondite  speculations 
of  infidel  philosophers,  but  in  the  face  of  the  plainest  and 
most  commonplace  of  ascertained  physical  facts,  the  story  of 
the  Noachian  Deluge  has  no  more  claim  to  credit  than  has 
that  of  Deucalion ;  and  whether  it  was,  or  was  not,  suggested 
by  the  familiar  acquaintance  of  its  originators  with  the  effects 
of  unusually  great  overflows  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  it 
is  utterly  devoid  of  historical  truth. 

That  is,  in  my  judgment,  the  necessary  result  of  the  ap- 
plication of  criticism,  based  upon  assured  physical  knowledge, 
to  the  story  of  the  Deluge.  And  it  is  satisfactory  that  the 
criticism  which  is  based,  not  upon  literary  and  historical 
speculations,  but  upon  well-ascertained  facts  in  the  depart- 
ments of  literature  and  history,  tends  to  exactly  the  same 
conclusion. 

For  I  find  this  much  agreed  upon  by  all  Biblical  scholars 


410  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  repute,  that  the  story  of  the  Deluge  in  Genesis  is  separable 
into  at  least  two  sets  of  statements  ;  and  that,  when  the  state- 
ments thus  separated  are  recombined  in  their  proper  order, 
each  set  furnishes  an  account  of  the  event,  coherent  and  com- 
plete within  itself,  but  in  some  respects  discordant  with  that 
afforded  by  the  other  set.  This  fact,  as  I  understand,  is  not 
disputed.  Whether  one  of  these  is  the  work  of  an  Elohist, 
and  the  other  of  a  Jehovist  narrator;  whether  the  two  have 
been  pieced  together  in  this  strange  fashion  because,  in  the 
estimation  of  the  compilers  and  editors  of  the  Pentateuch, 
they  had  equal  and  independent  authority,  or  not ;  or  whether 
there  is  some  other  way  of  accounting  for  it,  are  questions 
the  answers  to  which  do  not  affect  the  fact.  If  possible  I 
avoid  a  priori  arguments.  But  still,  I  think  it  may  be  urged, 
without  imprudence,  that  a  narrative  having  this  structure  is 
hardly  such  as  might  be  expected  from  a  writer  possessed  of 
full  and  infallibly  accurate  knowledge.  Once  more,  it  would 
seem  that  it  is  not  necessarily  the  mere  inclination  of  the 
skeptical  spirit  to  question  everything,  or  the  willful  blind- 
ness of  infidels,  which  prompts  grave  doubts  as  to  the  value 
of  a  narrative  thus  curiously  unlike  the  ordinary  run  of  vera- 
cious histories. 

But  the  voice  of  archaeological  and  historical  criticism 
still  has  to  be  heard ;  and  it  gives  forth  no  uncertain  sound. 
The  marvelous  recovery  of  the  records  of  an  antiquity,  far 
superior  to  any  that  can  be  ascribed  to  the  Pentateuch, 
which  has  been  effected  by  the  decipherers  of  cuneiform 
characters,  has  put  us  in  possession  of  a  series,  once  more, 
not  of  speculations,  but  of  facts,  which  have  a  most  remark- 
able bearing  upon  the  question  of  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
narrative  of  the  Flood.  It  is  established,  that  for  centuries 
before  the  asserted  migration  of  Terah  from  Ur  of  the  Chal- 
dees  (which,  according  to  the  orthodox  interpreters  of  the 
Pentateuch,  took  place  after  the  year  2000  B.  c.)  Lower 
Mesopotamia  was  the  seat  of  a  civilization  in  which  art  and 
science  and  literature  had  attained  a  development  formerly 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    41 1 

unsuspected,  or,  if  there  were  faint  reports  of  it,  treated  as 
fabulous.  And  it  is  also  no  matter  of  speculation,  but  a  fact, 
that  the  libraries  of  these  people  contain  versions  of  a  long 
epic  poem,  one  of  the  twelve  books  of  which  tells  a  story  of 
a  deluge,  which,  in  a  number  of  its  leading  features,  corre- 
sponds with  the  story  attributed  to  Berosus,  no  less  than 
with  the  story  given  in  Genesis,  with  curious  exactness. 
Thus,  the  correctness  of  Canon  Rawlinson's  conclusion,  cited 
above,  that  the  story  of  Berosus  was  neither  drawn  from  the 
Hebrew  record,  nor  is  the  foundation  of  it,  can  hardly  be 
questioned.  It  is  highly  probable,  if  not  certain,  that  Bero- 
sus relied  upon  one  of  the  versions  (for  there  seem  to  have 
been  several)  of  the  old  Babylonian  epos,  extant  in  his  time ; 
and,  if  that  is  a  reasonable  conclusion,  why  is  it  unreasonable 
to  believe  that  the  two  stories,  which  the  Hebrew  compiler 
has  put  together  in  such  an  inartistic  fashion,  were  ultimate- 
ly derived  from  the  same  source  ?  I  say  ultimately,  because 
it  does  not  at  all  follow  that  the  two  versions,  possibly 
trimmed  by  the  Jehovistic  writer  on  the  one  hand,  and  by 
the  Elohistic  on  the  other,  to  suit  Hebrew  requirements,  may 
not  have  been  current  among  the  Israelites  for  ages.  And 
they  may  have  acquired  great  authority  before  they  were 
combined  in  the  Pentateuch. 

Looking  at  the  convergence  of  all  these  lines  of  evidence 
to  the  one  conclusion — that  the  story  of  the  Flood  in  Genesis 
is  merely  a  Bowdlerized  version  of  one  of  the  oldest  pieces  of 
purely  fictitious  literature  extant ;  that  whether  this  is,  or  is 
not,  its  origin,  the  events  asserted  in  it  to  have  taken  place 
assuredly  never  did  take  place ;  further,  that,  in  point  of  fact, 
the  story,  in  the  plain  and  logically  necessary  sense  of  its 
words,  has  long  since  been  given  up  by  orthodox  and  con- 
servative commentators  of  the  Established  Church — I  can 
but  admire  the  courage  and  clear  foresight  of  the  Anglican 
divine  who  tells  us  that  we  must  be  prepared  to  choose  be- 
tween the  trustworthiness  of  scientific  method  and  the  trust- 
worthiness of  that  which  the  Church  declares  to  be  Divine 


412  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

authority.  For,  to  my  mind,  this  declaration  of  war  to  the 
knife  against  secular  science,  even  in  its  most  elementary 
form ;  this  rejection  without  a  moment's  hesitation  of  any 
and  all  evidence  which  conflicts  with  theological  dogma,  is 
the  only  position  which  is  logically  reconcilable  with  the 
axioms  of  orthodoxy.  If  the  Gospels  truly  report  that  which 
an  incarnation  of  the  God  of  Truth  communicated  to  the 
world,  then  it  surely  is  absurd  to  attend  to  any  other  evi- 
dence touching  matters  about  which  he  made  any  clear  state- 
ment, or  the  truth  of  which  is  distinctly  implied  by  his 
words.  If  the  exact  historical  truth  of  the  Gospels  is  an 
axiom  of  Christianity,  it  is  as  just  and  right  for  a  Chris- 
tian to  say,  Let  us  "close  our  ears  against  suggestions" 
of  scientific  critics,  as  it  is  for  the  man  of  science  to  re- 
fuse to  waste  his  time  upon  circle-squarers  and  flat-earth 
fanatics. 

It  is  commonly  reported  that  the  manifesto  by  which  the 
Canon  of  St.  Paul's  proclaims  that  he  nails  the  colors  of  the 
straitest  Biblical  infallibility  to  the  mast  of  the  ship  eccle- 
siastical, was  put  forth  as  a  counterblast  to  Lux  Mundi  ;  and 
that  the  passages  which  I  have  more  particularly  quoted  are 
directed  against  the  essay  on  "  The  Holy  Spirit  and  Inspira- 
tion "  in  that  collection  of  treatises  by  Anglican  divines  of 
high  standing,  who  must  assuredly  be  acquitted  of  con- 
scious "  infidel "  proclivities.  I  fancy  that  rumor  must,  for 
once,  be  right,  for  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  a  more  di- 
rect and  diametrical  contradiction  than  that  between  the 
passages  from  the  sermon  cited  above  and  those  which 
follow : — 

What  is  questioned  is  that  our  Lord's  words  foreclose  cer- 
tain critical  positions  as  to  the  character  of  Old  Testament  lit- 
erature. For  example,  does  His  use  of  Jonah's  resurrection  as 
a  type  of  His  own,  depend  in  any  real  degree  upon  whether  it 
is  historical  fact  or  allegory  ?  .  .  .  Once  more,  our  Lord  uses 
the  time  before-  the  Flood,  to  illustrate  the  carelessness  of  men 
before  His  own  coming.  ...  In  referring  to  the  Flood  He  cer- 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CnURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    413 

tainly  suggests  that  He  is  treating  it  as  typical,  for  He  intro- 
duces circumstances  —  "  eating  and  drinking,  marrying  and 
giving  in  marriage  " — which  have  no  counterpart  in  the  orig- 
inal narrative  (p.  358-9). 

"While  insisting  on  the  flow  of  inspiration  through  the 
whole  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  essayist  does  not  admit  its 
universality.  Here,  also,  the  new  apologetic  demands  a  par- 
tial flood  : 

But  does  the  inspiration  of  the  recorder  guarantee  the  exact 
historical  truth  of  what  he  records  t  And,  in  matter  of  fact, 
can  the  record,  with  due  regard  to  legitimate  historical  criti- 
cism, be  pronounced  true  ?  Now,  to  the  latter  of  these  two 
questions  (and  they  are  quite  distinct  questions)  we  may  reply 
that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  our  believing,  as  our  faith 
strongly  disposes  us  to  believe,  that  the  record  from  Abraham 
downward  is,  in  substance,  in  the  strict  sense  historical  (p.  351). 

It  would  appear,  therefore,  that  there  is  nothing  to  pre- 
vent our  believing  that  the  record,  from  Abraham  upward, 
consists  of  stories  in  the  strict  sense  unhistorical,  and  that 
the  pre-Abrahamic  narratives  are  mere  moral  and  religious 
"  types  "  and  parables. 

I  confess  I  soon  lose  my  way  when  I  try  to  follow  those 
who  walk  delicately  among  "types"  and  allegories.  A  cer- 
tain passion  for  clearness  forces  me  to  ask,  bluntly,  whether 
the  writer  means  to  say  that  Jesus  did  not  believe  the  stories  in 
question,  or  that  he  did  ?  When  Jesus  spoke,  as  of  a  matter 
of  fact,  that  "  the  Flood  came  and  destroyed  them  all,"  did 
he  believe  that  the  Deluge  really  took  place,  or  not?  It 
seems  to  me  that,  as  the  narrative  mentions  Noah's  wife,  and 
his  sons'  wives,  there  is  good  scriptural  warranty  for  the  state- 
ment that  the  antediluvians  married  and  were  given  in  mar- 
riage; and  I  should  have  thought  that  their  eating  and 
drinking  might  be  assumed  by  the  firmest  believer  in  the 
literal  truth  of  the  story.  Moreover,  I  venture  to  ask  what 
sort  of  value,  as  an  illustration  of  God's  methods  of  dealing 


414  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

with  sin,  has  an  account  of  an  event  that  never  happened  ? 
If  no  Flood  swept  the  careless  people  away,  how  is  the  Warning 
of  more  worth  than  the  cry  of  "  Wolf  "  when  there  is  no 
wolf  ?  If  Jonah's  three  days'  residence  in  the  whale  is  not 
an  "  admitted  reality,"  how  could  it  "  warrant  belief  "  in  the 
"  coming  resurrection  ?  "  If  Lot's  wife  was  not  turned  into 
a  pillar  of  salt,  the  bidding  those  who  turn  back  from  the 
narrow  path  to  "  remember  "  it  is,  morally,  about  on  a  level 
with  telling  a  naughty  child  that  a  bogy  is  coming  to  fetch  it 
away.  Suppose  that  a  Conservative  orator  warns  his  hearers 
to  beware  of  great  political  and  social  changes,  lest  they  end, 
as  in  "France,  in  the  domination  of  a  Robespierre ;  what  be- 
comes, not  only  of  his  argument,  but  of  his  veracity,  if  he, 
personally,  does  not  believe  that  Robespierre  existed  and  did 
the  deeds  attributed  to  him  ? 

Like  all  other  attempts  to  reconcile  the  results  of  scien- 
tifically-conducted investigation  with  the  demands  of  the  out- 
worn creeds  of  ecclesiasticism,  the  essay  on  Inspiration  is  just 
such  a  failure  as  must  await  mediation,  when  the  mediator 
is  unable  properly  to  appreciate  the  weight  of  the  evidence 
for  the  case  of  one  of  the  two  parties.  The  question  of  "  In- 
spiration "  really  possesses  no  interest  for  those  who  have  cast 
ecclesiasticism  and  all  its  works  aside,  and  have  no  faith  in 
any  source  of  truth  save  that  which  is  reached  by  the  patient 
application  of  scientific  methods.  Theories  of  inspiration  are 
speculations  as  to  the  means  by  which  the  authors  of  state- 
ments, in  the  Bible  or  elsewhere,  have  been  led  to  say  what 
they  have  said — and  it  assumes  that  natural  agencies  are  in- 
sufficient for  the  purpose.  I  prefer  to  stop  short  of  this 
problem,  finding  it  more  profitable  to  undertake  the  inquiry 
which  naturally  precedes  it — namely,  Are  these  statements 
true  or  false  ?  If  they  are  true,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  go 
into  the  question  of  their  supernatural  generation ;  if  they 
are  false,  it  certainly  is  not  worth  while. 

Now,  not  only  do  I  hold  it  to  be  proved  that  the  story  of 
the  Deluge  is  pure  fiction ;  but  I  have  no  hesitation  in  affirm- 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    415 

ing  the  same  thing  of  the  story  of  the  Creation.*  Between 
these  two  lies  the  story  of  the  creation  of  man  and  woman  and 
their  fall  from  primitive  innocence,  which  is  even  more  mon- 
strously improbable  than  either  of  the  other  two,  though,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  it  is  not  so  easily  capable  of  direct  refu- 
tation. It  can  be  demonstrated  that  the  earth  took  longer  than 
six  days  in  the  making,  and  that  the  Deluge,  as  described,  is  a 
physical  impossibility ;  but  there  is  no  proving,  especially  to 
those  who  are  perfect  in  the  art  of  closing  their  ears  to  that 
which  they  do  not  wish  to  hear,  that  a  snake  did  not  speak, 
or  that  Eve  was  not  made  out  of  one  of  Adam's  ribs. 

The  compiler  of  Genesis,  in  its  present  form,  evidently 
had  a  definite  plan  in  his  mind.  His  countrymen,  like  all 
other  men,  were  doubtless  curious  to  know  how  the  world 
began  ;  how  men,  and  especially  wicked  men,  came  into  being, 
and  how  existing  nations  and  races  arose  among  the  descend- 
ants of  one  stock ;  and,  finally,  what  was  the  history  of  their 
own  particular  tribe.  They,  like  ourselves,  desired  to  solve 
the  four  great  problems  of  cosmogeny,  anthropogeny,  eth- 
nogeny,  and  geneogeny.  The  Pentateuch  furnishes  the 
solutions  which  appeared  satisfactory  to  its  author.  One  of 
these,  as  we  have  seen,  was  borrowed  from  a  Babylonian  fable ; 
and  I  know  of  no  reason  to  suspect  any  different  origin  for 
the  rest.  Now,  I  would  ask,  is  the  story  of  the  fabrication  of 
Eve  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  those  pre-Abrahamic  narratives, 
the  historical  truth  of  which  is  an  open  question,  in  face 
of  the  reference  to  it  in  a  speech  unhappily  famous  for  the 


*  So  far  as  I  know,  the  narrative  of  the  Creation  is  not  now  held  to 
be  true,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  defined  historical  truth,  by  any  of 
the  reconcilers.  As  for  the  attempts  to  stretch  the  Pentateuchal  days  in- 
to periods  of  thousands  or  millions  of  years,  the  verdict  of  the  eminent 
biblical  scholar,  Dr.  Riehm  (Der  UUische  Schopfungsbericht,  1881,  pp. 
15,  16),  on  such  pranks  of  "  Auslegungskunst "  should  be  final.  Why 
do  the  reconcilers  take  Goethe's  advice  seriously  f — 

"  Im  Auslegen  seyd  frisch  und  munter ! 
Legt  ihr's  nicht  aus,  so  legt  was  unter." 


416  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

legal  oppression  to  which  it  has  been  wrongfully  forced  to 
lend  itself? 

Have  ye  not  read,  that  he  which  made  them  from  the  be- 
gining  made  them  male  and  female,  and  said,  For  this  cause 
shall  a  man  leave  his  father  and  mother,  and  cleave  to  his  wife ; 
and  the  twain  shall  become  one  flesh?  (Matt  xix.  5). 

If  divine  authority  is  not  here  claimed  for  the  twenty- 
fourth  verse  of  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis,  what  is  the 
value  of  language  ?  And  again,  I  ask,  if  one  may  play  fast 
and  loose  with  the  story  of  the  Fall  as  a  "  type  "  or  "  alle- 
gory," what  becomes  of  the  foundation  of  Pauline  theology? — 

For  since  by  man  came  death,  by  man  came  also  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead.  For  as  in  Adam  all  die,  so  also  in  Christ 
shall  all  be  made  alive  (1  Corinthians  xv.  21,  22). 

If  Adam  may  be  held  to  be  no  more  real  a  personage  than 
Prometheus,  and  if  the  story  of  the  Fall  is  merely  an  instruct- 
ive "  type,"  comparable  to  the  profound  Promethean  mythus, 
what  value  has  Paul's  dialectic? 

While,  therefore,  every  right-minded  man  must  sympathize 
with  the  efforts  of  those  theologians,  who  have  not  been  able 
altogether  to  close  their  ears  to  the  still,  small  voice  of  reason, 
to  escape  from  the  fetters  which  ecclesiasticism  has  forged, 
the  melancholy  fact  remains,  that  the  position  they  have  taken 
up  is  hopelessly  untenable.  It  is  raked  alike  by  the  old- 
fashioned  artillery  of  the  Churches  and  by  the  fatal  weapons 
of  precision  with  which  the  enfant s  perdus  of  the  advancing 
forces  of  science  are  armed.  They  must  surrender,  or  fall 
back  into  a  more  sheltered  position.  And  it  is  possible  that 
they  may  long  find  safety  in  such  retreat. 

It  is,  indeed,  probable  that  the  proportional  number  of 
those  who  will  distinctly  profess  their  belief  in  the  transub- 
stantiation  of  Lot's  wife,  and  the  anticipatory  experience  of 
submarine  navigation  by  Jonah ;  in  water  standing  fathoms 
deep  on  the  side  of  a  declivity  without  anything  to  hold  it 


LIGHTS  OF  THE  CHURCH  AND  LIGHT  OF  SCIENCE.    417 

up ;  and  in  devils  who  enter  swine,  will  not  increase.  But 
neither  is  there  ground  for  much  hope  that  the  proportion 
of  those  who  cast  aside  these  fictions  and  adopt  the  conse- 
quence of  that  repudiation,  are,  for  some  generations,  likely 
to  constitute  a  majority.  Our  age  is  a  day  of  compromises. 
The  present  and  the  near  future  seem  given  over  to  those 
happily,  if  curiously,  constituted  people  who  see  as  little 
difficulty  in  throwing  aside  any  amount  of  post-Abrahamic 
Scriptural  narrative,  as  the  authors  of  Lux  Mundi  see  in 
sacrificing  the  pre-Abrahamic  stories ;  and,  having  distilled 
away  every  inconvenient  matter  of  fact  in  Christian  history, 
continue  to  pay  divine  honors  to  the  residue.  There  really 
seems  to  be  no  reason  why  the  next  generation  should  not 
listen  to  a  Bampton  lecture  modeled  upon  that  addressed 
to  the  last : — 

Time  was — and  that  not  very  long  ago — when  all  the  rela- 
tions of  Biblical  authors  concerning  the  old  world  were  re- 
ceived with  a  ready  belief ;  and  an  unreasoning  and  uncritical 
faith  accepted  with  equal  satisfaction  the  narrative  of  the 
Captivity  and  the  doings  of  Moses  at  the  court  of  Pharaoh,  the 
account  of  the  Apostolic  meeting  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  and  that  of  the  fabrication  of  Eve.  We  can  most  of  us 
remember  when,  in  this  country,  the  whole  story  of  the  Ex- 
odus, and  even  the  legend  of  Jonah,  were  seriously  placed 
before  boys  as  history,  and  discoursed  of  in  as  dogmatic  a  tone 
as  the  tale  of  Agincourt  or  the  history  of  the  Norman  Con- 
quest. 

But  all  this  is  now  changed.  The  last  century  has  seen  the 
growth  of  scientific  criticism  to  its  full  strength.  The  whole 
world  of  history  has  been  revolutionized  and  the  mythology 
which  embarrassed  earnest  Christians  has  vanished  as  an  evil 
mist,  the  lifting  of  which  has  only  more  fully  revealed  the 
lineaments  of  infallible  Truth.  No  longer  in  contact  with  fact 
of  any  kind,  Faith  stands  now  and  for  ever  proudly  inacessible 
to  the  attacks  of  the  infidel. 

So  far  the  apologist  of  the  future.  Why  not?  Cantaiit 
vacuus. 


XIV. 
THE  KEEPEES  OE  THE  HEED  OF  SWINE. 

I  had  fondly  hoped  that  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I  had  come 
to  an  end  of  disputation,  and  that  the  hatchet  of  war  was 
finally  superseded  by  the  calumet,  which,  as  Mr.  Gladstone, 
I  believe,  objects  to  tobacco,  I  was  quite  willing  to  smoke  for 
both.  But  I  have  had,  once  again,  to  discover  that  the  adage 
that  whoso  seeks  peace  will  ensue  it,  is  a  somewhat  hasty 
generalization.  The  renowned  warrior  with  whom  it  is  my 
misfortune  to  be  opposed  in  most  things  has  dug  up  the  axe 
and  is  on  the  war-path  once  more.  The  weapon  has  been 
wielded  with  all  the  dexterity  which  long  practice  has  con- 
ferred on  a  past  master  in  craft,  whether  of  wood  or  state. 
And  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  simpler  sort  of  the 
great  tribe  which  he  heads  imagine  that  my  scalp  is  already 
on  its  way  to  adorn  their  big  chief's  wigwam.  I  am  glad 
therefore  to  be  able  to  relieve  any  anxieties  which  my  friends 
may  entertain  without  delay.  I  assure  them  that  my  skull 
retains  its  normal  covering,  and  that  though,  naturally,  I 
may  have  felt  alarmed,  nothing  serious  has  happened.  My 
doughty  adversary  has  merely  performed  a  war  dance,  and 
his  blows  have  for  the  most  part  cut  the  air.  I  regret  to  add, 
however,  that  by  misadventure,  and  I  am  afraid  I  must  say 
carelessness,  he  has  inflicted  one  or  two  severe  contusions  on 
himself. 

When  the  noise  of  approaching  battle  roused  me  from 
the  dreams  of  peace  which  occupy  my  retirement,  I  was  glad 
to  observe  (since  I  must  fight)  that  the  campaign  was  to  be 
opened  upon  a  new  field.     When  the  contest  raged  over  the 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    419 

Pentateuchal  myth  of  the  creation,  Mr.  Gladstone's  manifest 
want  of  acquaintance  with  the  facts  and  principles  involved 
in  the  discussion,  no  less  than  with  the  best  literature  on  his 
own  side  of  the  subject,  gave  me  the  uncomfortable  feeling  that 
I  had  my  adversary  at  a  disadvantage.  The  sun  of  science,  at 
my  back,  was  in  his  eyes.  But,  on  the  present  occasion,  we 
are  happily  on  an  equality.  History  and  Biblical  criticism 
are  as  much,  or  as  little,  my  vocation  as  they  are  that  of  Mr. 
Gladstone ;  the  blinding  from  too  much  light,  or  the  blind- 
ness from  too  little,  may  be  presumed  to  be  equally  shared 
by  both  of  us. 

Mr.  Gladstone  takes  up  his  new  position  in  the  country 
of  the  Gadarenes.  His  strategic  sense  justly  leads  him  to 
see  that  the  authority  of  the  teachings  of  the  synoptic  Gos- 
pels, touching  the  nature  of  the  spiritual  world,  turns  upon 
the  acceptance  or  the  rejection  of  the  Gadarene  and  other  like 
stories.  As  we  accept  or  repudiate  such  histories  as  that  of 
the  possessed  pigs,  so  shall  we  accept  or  reject  the  witness  of 
the  synoptics  to  such  miraculous  interventions. 

It  is  exactly  because  these  stories  constitute  the  key-stone 
of  the  orthodox  arch,  that  I  originally  drew  attention  to  them ; 
and,  in  spite  of  my  longing  for  peace,  I  am  truly  obliged  to 
Mr  Gladstone  for  compelling  me  to  place  my  case  before  the 
public  once  more.  It  may  be  thought  that  this  is  a  work  of 
supererogation  by  those  who  are  aware  that  my  essay  is  the 
subject  of  attack  in  a  work  so  largely  circulated  as  the  Im- 
pregnable Rock  of  Holy  Scripture ;  and  who  may  possibly, 
in  their  simplicity,  assume  that  it  must  be  truthfully  set 
forth  in  that  work.  But  the  warmest  admirers  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone will  hardly  be  prepared  to  maintain  that  mathematical 
accuracy  in  stating  the  opinions  of  an  opponent  is  the  most 
prominent  feature  of  his  controversial  method.  And  what 
follows  will  show  that,  in  the  present  case,  the  desire  to  be 
fair  and  accurate,  the  existence  of  which  I  am  bound  to  as- 
sume, has  not  borne  as  much  fruit  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. 


420  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

In  referring  to  the  statement  of  the  narrators  that  the 
herd  of  swine  perished  in  consequence  of  the  entrance  into 
them  of  the  demons  by  the  permission,  or  order,  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  I  said : 

"  Everything  that  I  know  of  law  and  justice  convinces  me 
that  the  wanton  destruction  of  other  people's  property  is  a 
misdemeanor  of  evil  example  "  (Nineteenth  Century,  Febru- 
ary, 1889,  p.  172). 

Mr.  Gladstone  has  not  found  it  convenient  to  cite  this 
passage;  and,  in  view  of  various  considerations,  I  dare  not 
assume  that  he  would  assent  to  it,  without  sundry  subtle 
modifications  which,  for  me,  might  possibly  rob  it  of  its  argu- 
mentative value.  But,  until  the  proposition  is  seriously  con- 
troverted, I  shall  assume  it  to  be  true,  and  content  myself 
with  warning  the  reader  that  neither  he  nor  I  have  any 
grounds  for  assuming  Mr.  Gladstone's  concurrence.  "With 
this  caution,  I  proceed  to  remark  that  I  think  it  may  be 
granted  that  the  people  whose  herd  of  2000  swine  (more  or 
fewer)  was  suddenly  destroyed  suffered  great  loss  and  damage. 
And  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  narrators  of  the  Gadarene 
story  do  not,  in  any  way,  refer  to  the  point  of  morality  and 
legality  thus  raised ;  as  I  said,  they  show  no  inkling  of  the 
moral  and  legal  difficulties  wdiich  arise. 

Such  being  the  facts  of  the  case,  I  submit  that  for  those 
who  admit  the  principle  laid  down,  the  conclusion  which  I 
have  drawn  necessarily  follows ;  though  I  repeat  that,  since 
Mr.  Gladstone  does  not  explicitly  admit  the  principle,  I  am 
far  from  suggesting  that  he  is  bound  by  its  logical  conse- 
quences. However,  I  distinctly  repeat  the  opinion  that  any 
one  who  acted  in  the  way  described  in  the  story  would,  in  my 
judgment,  be  guilty  of  "  a  misdemeanor  of  evil  example." 
About  that  point  I  desire  to  leave  no  ambiguity  whatever ; 
and  it  follows  that,  if  I  believed  the  story,  I  should  have 
no  hesitation  in  applying  this  judgment  to  the  chief  actor 
in  it. 

But  if  any  one  will  do  me  the  favor  to  turn  to  the  paper 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    421 

in  which  these  passages  occur,  he  will  find  that  a  consider- 
able part  of  it  is  devoted  to  the  exposure  of  the  familiar  trick 
of  the  "  counsel  for  creeds,"  who,  when  they  wish  to  profit 
by  the  easily  stirred  odium  theologicum,  are  careful  to  con- 
fuse disbelief  in  a  narrative  of  a  man's  act,  or  disapproval  of 
the  acts  as  narrated,  with  disbelieving  and  vilipending  the 
man  himself.  If  I  say  that  "  according  to  paragraphs  in 
several  newspapers,  my  valued  Separatist  friend  A.  B.  has 
houghed  a  lot  of  cattle  which  he  considered  to  be  unlawfully 
in  the  possession  of  an  Irish  land-grabber ;  that  in  my  opinion 
any  such  act  is  a  misdemeanor  of  evil  example ;  but  that  I 
utterly  disbelieve  the  whole  story  and  have  no  doubt  that  it 
is  a  mere  fabrication : "  it  really  appears  to  me  that,  if  any 
one  charges  me  with  calling  A.  B.  an  immoral  misdemeanant, 
I  should  be  justified  in  using  very  strong  language  respecting 
either  his  sanity  or  his  veracity.  And,  if  an  analogous  charge 
has  been  brought  in  reference  to  the  Gadarene  story,  there  i3 
certainly  no  excuse  producible  on  account  of  any  lack  of  plain 
speech  on  my  part.  Surely  no  language  can  be  more  explicit 
than  that  which  follows : 

"  I  can  discern  no  escape  from  this  dilemma ;  either  Jesus 
said  what  he  is  reported  to  have  said,  or  he  did  not.  In  the 
former  case,  it  is  inevitable  that  his  authority  on  matters  con- 
nected with  the  '  unseen  world '  should  be  roughly  shaken ; 
in  the  latter,  the  blow  falls  upon  the  authority  of  the  synoptic 
Gospels  "  (p.  173).  "  The  choice  then  lies  between  discredit- 
ing those  who  compiled  the  Gospel  biographies  and  disbe- 
lieving the  Master,  whom  they,  simple  souls,  thought  to  honor 
by  preserving  such  traditions  of  the  exercise  of  his  authority 
over  Satan's  invisible  world"  (p.  174).  And  I  leave  no 
shadow  of  doubt  as  to  my  own  choice  :  "  After  what  has  been 
said,  I  do  not  think  that  any  sensible  man,  unless  he  happen 
to  be  angry,  will  accuse  me  of  '  contradicting  the  Lord  and 
his  Apostles '  if  I  reiterate  my  total  disbelief  in  the  whole 
Gadarene  story"  (p.  178). 

I  am  afraid,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  must  have  been 


422  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

exceedingly  angry  when  he  committed  himself  to  such  a  state- 
ment as  follows : 

So,  then,  after  eighteen  centuries  of  worship  offered  to  our 
Lord  by  the  most  cultivated,  the  most  developed,  and  the  most 
progressive  portion  of  the  human  race,  it  has  been  reserved  to  a 
scientific  inquirer  to  discover  that  He  was  no  better  than  a  law- 
breaker and  an  evil-doer.  .  .  .  How,  in  such  a  matter,  came  the 
honors  of  originality  to  be  reserved  to  our  time  and  to  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  ?  (pp.  269,  270.) 

Truly,  the  hatchet  is  hardly  a  weapon  of  precision,  but 
would  seem  to  have  rather  more  the  character  of  the  boom- 
erang, which  returns  to  damage  the  reckless  thrower.  Doubt- 
less such  incidents  are  somewhat  ludicrous.  But  they  have  a 
very  serious  side ;  and,  if  I  rated  the  opinion  of  those  who 
blindly  follow  Mr.  Gladstone's  leading,  but  not  light,  in  these 
matters,  much  higher  than  the  great  Duke  of  Wellington's 
famous  standard  of  minimum  value,  I  think  I  might  fairly 
beg  them  to  reflect  upon  the  general  bearings  of  this  particu- 
lar example  of  his  controversial  method.  I  imagine  it  can 
hardly  commend  itself  to  their  cool  judgment. 

After  this  tragi-comical  ending  to  what  an  old  historian 
calls  a  "  robustious  and  rough  coming  on  " ;  and  after  some 
praises  of  the  provisions  of  the  Mosaic  law  in  the  matter  of 
not  eating  pork — in  which,  as  pork  disagrees  with  me  and 
for  some  other  reasons,  I  am  much  disposed  to  concur,  though 
I  do  not  see  what  they  have  to  do  with  the  matter  in  hand — 
comes  the  serious  onslaught. 

Mr.  Huxley,  exercising  his  rapid  judgment  on  the  text,  does 
not  appear  to  have  encumbered  himself  with  the  labor  of  in- 
quiring what  anybody  else  had  known  or  said  about  it.  He 
has  thus  missed  a  point  which  might  have  been  set  up  in  sup- 
port of  his  accusation  against  our  Lord  (p.  273). 

Unhappily  for  my  comfort,  I  have  been  much  exercised 
in  controversy  during  the  past  thirty  years ;  and  the  only 
compensation  for  the  loss  of  time  and  the  trials  of  temper 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OP  SWINE.    423 

which  it  has  inflicted  upon  me,  is  that  I  have  come  to  regard 
it  as  a  branch  of  the  fine  arts,  and  to  take  an  impartial  and 
aesthetic  interest  in  the  way  it  is  conducted,  even  by  those 
whose  efforts  are  directed  against  myself.  Now,  from  the 
purely  artistic  point  of  view  (which,  as  we  are  all  being  told, 
has  nothing  to  do  with  morals),  I  consider  it  an  axiom,  that 
one  should  never  appear  to  doubt  that  the  other  side  has 
performed  the  elementary  duty  of  acquiring  proper  element- 
ary information,  unless  there  is  demonstrative  evidence  to 
the  contrary.  And  I  think,  though  I  admit  that  this  may 
be  a  purely  subjective  appreciation,  that  (unless  you  are  quite 
certain)  there  is  a  "  want  of  finish,"  as  a  great  master  of  dis- 
putation once  put  it,  about  the  suggestion  that  your  oppo- 
nent has  missed  a  point  on  his  own  side.  Because  it  may 
happen  that  he  has  not  missed  it  at  all,  but  only  thought  it 
unworthy  of  serious  notice.  And  if  he  proves  that,  the  sug- 
gestion looks  foolish. 

Merely  noting  the  careful  repetition  of  a  charge,  the  ab- 
surdity of  which  has  been  sufficiently  exposed  above,  I  now 
ask  my  readers  to  accompany  me  on  a  little  voyage  of  dis- 
covery in  search  of  the  side  on  which  the  rapid  judgment 
and  the  ignorance  of  the  literature  of  the  subject  lie.  I 
think  I  may  promise  them  very  little  trouble,  and  a  good 
deal  of  entertainment. 

Mr.  G-ladstone  is  of  opinion  that  the  Gadarene  swinefolk 
were  "  Hebrews  bound  by  the  Mosaic  law  "  (p.  274),  and  he 
conceives  that  it  has  not  occurred  to  me  to  learn  what  may 
be  said  in  favor  of  and  against  this  view.     He  tells  us  that 

Some  commentators  haye  alleged  the  authority  of  Josephus 
for  stating  that  Gadara  was  a  city  of  Greeks  rather  than  of 
Jews,  from  whence  it  might  be  inferred  that  to  keep  swine  was 
innocent  and  lawful  (273). 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  goes  on  to  inform  his  readers  that  in 
his  painstaking  search  after  truth  he  has  submitted  to  the 
labor   of   personally    examining  the   writings   of  Josephus. 


424  CONTftOVEETED  QUESTIONS. 

Moreover,  in  a  note,  lie  positively  exhibits  an  acquaintance, 
in  addition,  with  the  works  of  Bishop  Wordsworth  and  of 
Archbishop  Trench ;  and  even  shows  that  he  has  read  Hud- 
son's commentary  on  Josephus.  And  yet  people  say  that 
our  Biblical  critics  do  not  equal  the  Germans  in  research ! 
But  Mr.  Gladstone's  citation  of  Cuvier  and  Sir  John  Her- 
schel  about  the  Creation  myth,  and  his  ignorance  of  all  the 
best  modern  writings  on  his  own  side,  produced  a  great  im- 
pression on  my  mind.  I  have  had  the  audacity  to  suspect 
that  his  acquaintance  with  what  has  been  done  in  biblical 
history  might  stand  at  no  higher  level  than  his  information 
about  the  natural  sciences.  However  unwillingly,  I  have  felt 
bound  to  consider  the  possibility  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  labors 
in  this  matter  may  have  carried  him  no  further  than  Jo- 
sephus and  the  worthy,  but  somewhat  antique,  episcopal  and 
other  authorities  to  whom  he  refers ;  that  even  his  reading 
of  Josephus  may  have  been  of  the  most  cursory  nature,  di- 
rected not  to  the  understanding  of  his  author,  but  to  the 
discovery  of  useful  controversial  matter ;  and  that,  in  view 
of  the  not  inconsiderable  misrepresentation  of  my  statements 
to  which  I  have  drawn  attention,  it  might  be  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's exposition  of  the  evidence  of  Josephus  was  not  more 
trustworthy.  I  proceed  to  show  that  my  provisions  have 
been  fully  justified.  I  doubt  if  controversial  literature  con- 
tains anything  more  piquant  than  the  story  I  have  to  un- 
fold. 

That  I  should  be  reproved  for  rapidity  of  judgment  is 
very  just :  however  quaint  the  situation  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  as 
the  reprover,  may  seem  to  people  blessed  with  a  sense  of 
humor.  But  it  is  a  quality,  the  defects  of  which  have  been 
painfully  obvious  to  me  all  my  life ;  and  I  try  to  keep  my 
Pegasus — at  best  a  poor  Shetland  variety  of  that  species  of 
quadruped — at  a  respectable  jog-trot,  by  loading  him  heavily 
with  bales  of  reading.  Those  who  took  the  trouble  to  study 
my  paper  in  good  faith,  and  not  for  mere  controversial  pur- 
poses, have  a  right  to  know,  that  something  more  than  a 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    425 

hasty  glimpse  of  two  or  three  passages  of  Josephns  (even 
with  as  many  episcopal  works  thrown  in)  lay  at  the  back  of 
the  few  paragraphs  I  devoted  to  the  Gadarene  story.  I  pro- 
ceed to  set  forth,  as  briefly  as  I  can,  some  results  of  that 
preparatory  work.  My  artistic  principles  do  not  permit  me, 
at  present,  to  express  a  doubt  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  ac- 
quainted with  the  facts  I  am  about  to  mention  when  he 
undertook  to  write.  But,  if  he  did  know  them,  then  both 
what  he  has  said  and  what  he  has  not  said,  his  assertions 
and  his  omissions  alike,  will  require  a  paragraph  to  them- 
selves. 

The  common  consent  of  the  synoptic  Gospels  affirms  that 
the  miraculous  transference  of  devils  from  a  man,  or  men, 
to  sundry  pigs  took  place  somewhere  on  the  eastern  shore  of 
the  Lake  of  Tiberias ;  "  on  the  other  side  of  the  sea  over 
against  Galilee,"  the  western  shore  being,  without  doubt,  in- 
cluded in  the  latter  province.  But  there  is  no  such  concord 
when  we  come  to  the  name  of  the  part  of  the  eastern  shore 
on  which,  according  to  the  story,  Jesus  and  his  disciples 
landed.  In  the  revised  version  Matthew  calls  it  the  "  coun- 
try of  the  Gadarenes : "  Luke  and  Mark  have  "  Gerasenes." 
In  sundry  very  ancient  manuscripts  "  Gergesenes  "  occurs. 

The  existence  of  any  place  called  Gergesa,  however,  is  de- 
clared by  the  weightiest  authorities  whom  I  have  consulted 
to  be  very  questionable ;  and  no  such  town  is  mentioned  in 
the  list  of  the  cities  of  the  Decapolis,  in  the  territory  of  which 
(as  it  would  seem  from  Mark  v.  20)  the  transaction  was  sup- 
posed to  take  place.  About  Gerasa,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
hangs  no  such  doubt.  It  was  a  large  and  important  member 
of  the  group  of  the  Decapolitan  cities.  But  Gerasa  is  more 
than  thirty  miles  distant  from  the  nearest  part  of  the  Lake 
of  Tiberias,  while  the  city  mentioned  in  the  narrative  could 
not  have  been  very  far  off  the  scene  of  the  event.  However, 
as  Gerasa  was  a  very  important  Hellenic  city,  not  much  more 
than  a  score  of  miles  from  Gadara,  it  is  easily  imaginable  that 
a  locality  which  was  part  of  Decapolitan  territory  may  have 
19 


426  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

been  spoken  of  as  belonging  to  one  of  the  two  cities,  when  it 
really  appertained  to  the  other.    After  weighing  all  the  argu- 
ments, no  doubt  remains  on  my  mind  that  "  Gadarene "  is 
the  proper  reading.      At   the   period   under   consideration, 
Gadara  appears  to  have  been  a  good-sized  fortified  town, 
about  two  miles  in  circumference.     It  was  a  place  of  consid- 
erable strategic  importance,  inasmuch  as  it  lay  on  a  high 
ridge  at  the  point  of  intersection  of  the  roads  from  Tiberias, 
Scythopolis,  Damascus,  and  Gerasa.     Three  miles  north  from 
it,  where  the  Tiberias  road  descended  into  the  valley  of  the 
Hieromices,  lay  the  famous  hot  springs  and  the  fashionable 
baths  of  Amatha.     On  the  northeast  side,  the  remains  of  the 
extensive  necropolis  of  Gadara  are  still  to  be  seen.    Innumer- 
able sepulchral  chambers  are  excavated  in  the  limestone  cliffs, 
and   many  of  them  still  contain   sarcophaguses  of  basalt ; 
while  not  a  few  are  converted  into  dwellings  by  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  present  village  of  Tim  Keis.     The  distance  of 
Gadara  from  the  southeastern  shore  of  the  Lake  of  Tiberias 
is  less  than  seven  miles.     The  nearest  of  the  other  cities  of 
the  Decapolis,  to  the  north,  is  Hippos,  which  also  lay  some 
seven  miles  off  on  the  southeastern  corner  of  the  shore  of  the 
lake.     In  accordance  with  the  ancient  Hellenic  practice  that 
each  city  should  be  surrounded  by  a  certain  amount  of  terri- 
tory amenable  to  its  jurisdiction,*  and  on  the  other  grounds, 
it  may  be  taken  for  certain  that  the  intermediate  country 
was  divided  between  Gadara  and  Hippos,  and  that  the  citi- 
zens of  Gadara  had  free  access  to  a  port  on  the  lake.     Hence 
the  title  of  "  country  of  the  Gadarenes  "  applied  to  the  local- 
ity of  the  porcine  catastrophe  becomes  easily  intelligible. 
The  swine  may  well  be  imagined  to  have  been  feeding  (as 
they  do  now  in  the  adjacent  region)  on  the  hillsides,  which 
slope  somewhat  steeply  down  to  the  lake  from  the  northern 

*  Thus  Josephus  (lib.  ix.)  says  that  his  rival,  Justus,  persuaded  the 
citizens  of  Tiberias  to  "  set  the  villages  that  belonged  to  Gadara  and 
Hippos  on  fire ;  which  villages  were  situated  on  the  borders  of  Tiberias 
and  of  the  region  of  Scythopolis." 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    427 

boundary  wall  of  the  valley  of  the  Hieromices  (Nahr  Yar- 
muk),  about  half-way  between  the  city  and  the  shore,  and 
doubtless  lay  well  within  the  territory  of  the  polis  of  Gadara. 

The  proof  that  Gadara  was,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a 
Gentile  and  not  a  Jewish  city  is  complete.  The  date  and 
the  occasion  of  its  foundation  are  unknown ;  but  it  certainly 
existed  in  the  third  century  b.  c.  Antiochus  the  Great  an- 
nexed it  to  his  dominions  in  B.  c.  198.  After  this,  during 
the  brief  revival  of  Jewish  autonomy,  Alexander  Jannaeus 
took  it ;  and  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  the  records  go,  it  fell 
under  Jewish  rule.*  From  this  it  was  rescued  by  Pompey 
(b.  c.  63),  who  rebuilt  the  city  and  incorporated  it  with  the 
province  of  Syria.  In  gratitude  to  the  Eomans  for  the  disso- 
lution of  a  hated  union,  the  Gadarenes  adopted  the  Pompeian 
era  on  their  coinage.  Gadara  was  a  commercial  center  of 
some  importance,  and  therefore,  it  may  be  assumed,  Jews 
settled  in  it,  as  they  settled  in  almost  all  considerable  Gentile 
cities.  But  a  wholly  mistaken  estimate  of  the  magnitude  of 
the  Jewish  colony  has  been  based  upon  the  notion  that  Ga- 
binius,  proconsul  of  Syria  in  57-55  b.  c,  seated  one  of  the 
five  sanhedrims  in  Gadara.  Schurer  has  pointed  out  that 
what  he  really  did  was  to  lodge  one  of  them  in  Gazara,  far 
away  on  the  other  side  of  the  Jordan.  This  is  one  of  the 
many  errors  which  have  arisen  out  of  the  confusion  of  the 
names  Gadara,  Gadara,  and  Ga3ara. 

Augustus  made  a  present  of  Gadara  to  Herod  the  Great, 
as  an  appanage  personal  to  himself ;  and,  upon  Herod's  death, 
recognizing  it  to  be  a  "  Grecian  city  like  Hippos  and  Gaza,"  \ 
he  transferred  it  back  to  its  former  place  in  the  province  of 
Syria.  That  Herod  made  no  effort  to  judaize  his  temporary 
possession,  but  rather  the  contrary,  is  obvious  from  the  fact 
that  the  coins  of  Gadara,  while  under  his  rule,  bear  the  image 

*  It  is  said  to  have  been  destroyed  by  its  captors. 

f  "  But  as  to  the  Grecian  cities  Gaza  and  Gadara  and  Hippos,  he  cut 
them  off  from  the  kingdom  and  added  them  to  Syria."— Josephus, 
Wars,  II.  vi.  3.    See  also  Antiquities,  XVII.  xi.  4. 


428  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  Augustus  with  the  superscription  3c/Wtos — a  flying  in  the 
face  of  Jewish  prejudices  which  even  he  did  not  dare  to 
venture  upon  in  Judasa.  And  I  may  remark  that,  if  my  co- 
trustee of  the  British  Museum  had  taken  the  trouble  to  visit 
the  splendid  numismatic  collection  under  our  charge,  he 
might  have  seen  two  coins  of  Gadara,  one  of  the  time  of 
Tiberius  and  the  other  of  that  of  Titus,  each  bearing  the  effi- 
gies of  the  emperor  on  the  obverse:  while  the  personified 
genius  of  the  city  is  on  the  reverse  of  the  former.  Further, 
the  well-known  works  of  De  Saulcy  and  of  Ekhel  would  have 
supplied  the  information  that,  from  the  time  of  Augustus  to 
that  of  Gordian,  the  Gadarene  coinage  had  the  same  thor- 
oughly Gentile  character.  Curious  that  a  city  of  "  Hebrews 
bound  by  the  Mosaic  law  "  should  tolerate  such  a  mint ! 

Whatever  increase  in  population  the  Ghetto  of  Gadara 
may  have  undergone  between  b.  c.  4  and  A.  D.  66,  it  nowise 
affected  the  Gentile  and  anti-judaic  character  of  the  city  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  great  war ;  for  Josephus  tells  us  that  im- 
mediately after  the  great  massacre  at  Caesarea,  the  revolted 
Jews  "  laid  waste  the  villages  of  the  Syrians  and  their  neigh- 
boring cities,  Philadelphia  and  Sebonitis  and  Gerasa  and 
Pella  and  Scythopolis,  and  after  them  Gadara  and  Hippos  " 
( Wars,  II.  xviii.  1).  I  submit  that  if  Gadara  had  been  a  city 
of  "Hebrews  bound  by  the  Mosaic  law,"  the  ravaging  of 
their  territory  by  their  brother  Jews  in  revenge  for  the  mas- 
sacre of  the  Cesarean  Jews  by  the  Gentile  population  of  that 
place,  would  surely  have  been  a  somewhat  unaccountable  pro- 
ceeding. But  when  we  proceed  a  little  further,  to  the  fifth 
section  of  the  chapter  in  which  this  statement  occurs,  the 
whole  affair  becomes  intelligible  enough. 

Besides  this  murder  at  Scythopolis,  the  other  cities  rose  up 
against  the  Jews  that  were  among  them:  those  of  Askelon  slew 
two  thousand  five  hundred,  and  those  of  Ptolemais  two  thous- 
and, and  put  not  a  few  into  bonds ;  those  of  Tyre  also  put  a 
great  number  to  death,  but  kept  a  greater  number  in  prison ; 
moreover,  those  of  Hippos  and  those  of  Gadara  did  the  like, 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.         429 

while  they  put  to  death  the  boldest  of  the  Jews,  but  kept  those 
of  whom  they  were  most  afraid  in  custody;  as  did  the  rest  of 
the  cities  of  Syria  according  as  they  every  one  either  hated  them 
or  were  afraid  of  them. 

Josephus  is  not  always  trustworthy,  but  he  has  no  con- 
ceivable motive  for  altering  facts  here  ;  he  speaks  of  contem- 
porary events,  in  which  he  himself  took  an  active  part,  and 
he  characterizes  the  cities  in  the  way  familiar  to  him.  For 
Josephus,  Gadara  is  just  as  much  a  Gentile  city  as  Ptolemais ; 
it  was  reserved  for  his  latest  commentator,  either  ignoring,  or 
ignorant  of,  all  this,  to  tell  us  that  Gadara  had  a  Hebrew 
population  bound  by  the  Mosaic  law. 

In  the  face  of  all  this  evidence,  most  of  which  has  been 
put  before  serious  students,  with  full  reference  to  the  needful 
authorities  and  in  a  thoroughly  judicial  manner,  by  Schiirer 
in  his  classical  work,*  one  reads  with  stupefaction  the  state- 
ment which  Mr.  Gladstone  has  thought  fit  to  put  before  the 
uninstructed  public : 

Some  commentators  have  alleged  the  authority  of  Josephus 
for  stating  that  Gadara  was  a  city  of  Greeks  rather  than  of  Jews, 
from  whence  it  might  be  inferred  that  to  keep  swine  was  inno- 
cent and  lawful.  This  is  not  quite  the  place  for  a  critical  ex- 
amination of  the  matter;  but  I  have  examined  it,  and  have 
satisfied  myself  that  Josephus  gives  no  reason  whatever  to  sup- 
pose that  the  population  of  Gadara,  and  still  less  (if  less  may  be) 
the  population  of  the  neighborhood,  and  least  of  all  the  swine- 
herding  or  lower  portion  of  that  population,  were  other  than 
Hebrews  bound  by  the  Mosaic  law.     (Pp.  373-4). 

Even  "  rapid  judgment "  can  not  be  pleaded  in  excuse  for 
this  surprising  statement,  because  a  "  Note  on  the  Gadarene 
miracle  "  is  added  (in  a  special  appendix)  in  which  the  refer- 
ences are  given  to  the  passages  of  Josephus,  by  the  improved 
interpretation  of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  has  thus  contrived  to 
satisfy  himself  of  the  thing  which  is  not.     One  of  these  is 


Geschichte  desjudischen  VolJces  im  Zeitalter  Christi,  1886-90. 


430  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

Antiquities,  XVII.  xiii.  4,  in  which  section  I  regret  to  say  I 
can  find  no  mention  of  Gadara.  In  Antiquities,  XVII.  xi.  4, 
however,  there  is  a  passage  which  would  appear  to  be  that 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  means,  and  I  will  give  it  in  full,  al- 
though I  have  already  cited  part  of  it : 

There  were  also  certain  of  the  cities  which  paid  tribute  to 
Archelaus ;  Strato's  tower,  and  Sebaste,  with  Joppa  and  Jerusa- 
lem ;  for,  as  to  Gaza,  Gadara,  and  Hippos,  they  were  Grecian 
cities,  which  Caesar  separated  from  his  government,  and  added 
them  to  the  province  of  Syria. 

That  is  to  say,  Augustus  simply  restored  the  states  of  things 
which  existed  before  he  gave  Gadara,  then  certainly  a  Gentile 
city,  lying  outside  Judasa,  to  Herod  as  a  mark  of  great  per- 
sonal favor.  Yet  Mr.  Gladstone  can  gravely  tell  those  who 
are  not  in  a  position  to  check  his  statements : 

The  sense  seems  to  be  not  that  these  cities  were  inhabited  by 
a  Greek  population,  but  that  they  had  politically  been  taken  out 
of  Judaea  and  added  to  Syria,  which  I  presume  was  classified  as 
simply  Hellenic,  a  portion  of  the  great  Greek  empire  erected  by 
Alexander.     (Pp.  295-6.) 

Mr.  Gladstone's  next  reference  is  to  the  Wars,  III.  vii.  1. 

So  Vespasian  marched  to  the  city  Gadara,  arid  took  it  upon 
the  first  onset,  because  he  found  it  destitute  of  a  considerable 
number  of  men  grown  up  fit  for  war.  He  then  came  into  it, 
and  slew  all  the  youth,  the  Romans  having  no  mercy  on  any 
age  whatsoever;  and  this  was  done  out  of  the  hatred  they  bore 
the  nation,  and  because  of  the  iniquity  they  had  been  guilty  of 
in  the  affair  of  Cestius. 

Obviously,  then,  Gadara  was  an  ultra-Jewish  city.  Q.E.D. 
But  a  student  trained  in  the  use  of  weapons  of  precision, 
rather  than  in  that  of  rhetorical  tomahawks,  has  had  many 
and  painful  warnings  to  look  well  about  him  before  trusting 
an  argument  to  the  mercies  of  a  passage,  the  context  of  which 
he  has  not  carefully  considered.     If  Mr.  Gladstone  had  not 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OP  SWINE.    431 

been  too  much  in  a  hurry  to  turn  his  imaginary  prize  to  ac- 
count— if  he  had  paused  just  to  look  at  the  preceding  chapter 
of  Josephus — he  would  have  discovered  that  his  much  haste 
meant  very  little  speed.  He  would  have  found  (Wars,  III. 
vi.  2)  that  Vespasian  marched  from  his  base,  the  port  of 
Ptolemais  (Acre),  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  into 
Galilee ;  and,  having  dealt  with  the  so-called  "  Gadara,"  was 
minded  to  finish  with  Jotapata,  a  strong  place  about  fourteen 
miles  southeast  of  Ptolemais,  into  which  Josephus,  who  at 
first  had  fled  to  Tiberias,  eventually  threw  himself — Vespasian 
arriving  before  Jotapata  "  the  very  next  day."  Now,  if  any 
one  will  take  a  decent  map  of  Ancient  Palestine  in  hand,  he 
will  see  that  Jotapata,  as  I  have  said,  lies  about  fourteen  miles 
in  a  straight  line  east-southeast  of  Ptolemais,  while  a  certain 
town,  "  Gabara  "  (which  was  also  held  by  the  Jews),  is  situ- 
ated about  the  same  distance  to  the  east  of  that  port.  Noth- 
ing can  be  more  obvious  than  that  Vespasian,  wishing  to 
advance  from  Ptolemais  into  Galilee,  could  not  afford  to  leave 
these  strongholds  in  the  possession  of  the  enemy ;  and  as  Ga- 
bara would  lie  on  his  left  flank  when  he  moved  to  Jotapata, 
he  took  that  city,  whence  his  communications  with  his  base 
could  easily  be  threatened,  first.  It  might  really  have  been 
fair  evidence  of  demoniac  possession,  if  the  best  general  of 
Eome  had  marched  forty  odd  miles,  as  the  crow  flies,  through 
hostile  Galilee,  to  take  a  city  (which,  moreover,  had  just  tried 
to  abolish  its  Jewish  population)  on  the  other  side  of  the  Jor- 
dan ;  and  then  marched  back  again  to  a  place  fourteen  miles 
off  his  starting-point.*  One  would  think  that  the  most  care- 
less of  readers  must  be  startled  by  this  incongruity  into  in- 
quiring wThether  there  might  not  be  something  wrong  with 
the  text ;  and  if  he  had  done  so  he  would  have  easily  dis- 

*  If  William  the  Conqueror,  after  fighting  the  battle  of  Hastings, 
had  marched  to  capture  Chichester  and  then  returned  to  assault  Rye, 
being  all  the  while  anxious  to  reach  London,  his  proceedings  would  not 
have  been  more  eccentric  than  Mr.  Gladstone  must  imagine  those  of 
Vespasian  were. 


432  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

covered  that  since  the  time  of  Reland,  a  century  and  a  half 
ago,  careful  scholars  have  read  Ga#ara  for  Gadara.* 

Once  more,  I  venture  to  point  out  that  training  in  the 
use  of  the  weapons  of  precision  of  science  may  have  its  value 
in  historical  studies,  if  only  in  preventing  the  occurrence  of 
droll  blunders  in  geography. 

In  the  third  citation  ( Wars,  IV.  vii.)  Josephus  tells  us 
that  Vespasian  marched  against  "  Gadara,"  which  he  calls 
the  metropolis  of  Peraea  (it  was  possibly  the  seat  of  a  common 
festival  of  the  Decapolitan  cities),  and  entered  it  without 
opposition,  the  wealthy  and  powerful  citizens  having  opened 
negotiations  with  him  without  the  knowledge  of  an  opposite 
party,  who,  "  as  being  inferior  in  number  to  their  enemies 
who  were  within  the  city,  and  seeing  the  Romans  very  near 
the  city,"  resolved  to  fly.  Before  doing  so,  however,  they, 
after  a  fashion  unfortunately  too  common  among  the  Zealots, 
murdered  and  shockingly  mutilated  Dolesus,  a  man  of  the 
first  rank,  who  had  promoted  the  embassy  to  Vespasian,  and 
then  "  ran  out  of  the  city."  Hereupon  "  the  people  of  Ga- 
dara "  (surely  not  this  time  "  Hebrews  bound  by  the  Mosaic 
law")  received  Vespasian  with  joyful  exclamations,  volun- 
tarily pulled  down  their  wall,  so  that  the  city  could  not  in 
future  be  used  as  a  fortress  by  the  Jews,  and  accepted  a 
Roman  garrison  for  their  future  protection.  Granting  that 
this  Gadara  really  is  the  city  of  the  Gadarenes,  the  reference, 
without  citation,  to  the  passage  in  support  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
contention  seems  rather  remarkable.  Taken  in  conjunction 
with  the  shortly  antecedent  ravaging  of  the  Gadarene  terri- 
tory by  the  Jews,  in  fact,  better  proof  could  hardly  be  ex- 
pected of  the  real  state  of  the  case ;  namely,  that  the  popula- 
tion of  Gadara  (and  notably  the  wealthy  and  respectable  part 
of  it)  was  thoroughly  Hellenic ;  though,  as  in  Caesarea  and 
elsewhere  among  the  Palestinian  cities,  the  rabble  contained 

*  See  Reland,  Palestina  (1714),  t.  ii.  p.  771.    Also  Robinson,  Later 
Biblical  Researches  (1856),  p.  87  note. 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    433 

a  considerable  body  of  fanatical  Jews,  whose  reckless  ferocity 
made  them,  even  though  a  mere  minority  of  the  population, 
a  standing  danger  to  the  city. 

Thus  Mr.  Gladstone's  conclusion  from  his  study  of  Jose- 
phus,  that  the  population  of  Gadara  were  "  Hebrews  bound 
by  the  Mosaic  law,"  turns  out  to  depend  upon  nothing  better 
than  a  marvelously  complete  misinterpretation  of  what  that 
author  says,  combined  with  equally  marvelous  geographical 
misunderstandings,  long  since  exposed  and  rectified ;  while  the 
positive  evidence  that  Gadara,  like  other  cities  of  the  Decapo- 
lis,  was  thoroughly  Hellenic  in  organization  and  essentially 
Gentile  in  population  is  overwhelming. 

And,  that  being  the  fact  of  the  matter,  patent  to  all  who 
will  take  the  trouble  to  inquire  about  what  has  been  said 
about  it,  however  obscure  to  those  who  merely  talk  of  so  do- 
ing, the  thesis  that  the  Gadarene  swineherds,  or  owners,  were 
Jews  violating  the  Mosaic  law  shows  itself  to  be  an  empty 
and  most  unfortunate  guess.  But  really,  whether  they  that 
kept  the  swine  were  Jews,  or  whether  they  were  Gentiles,  is 
a  consideration  which  has  no  relevance  whatever  to  my  case. 
The  legal  provisions  which  alone  had  authority  over  an  in- 
habitant of  the  country  of  the  Gadarenes  were  the  Gentile 
laws  sanctioned  by  the  Eoman  suzerain  of  the  province  of 
Syria,  just  as  the  only  law  which  has  authority  in  England  is 
that  recognized  by  the  sovereign  Legislature.  Jewish  com- 
munities in  England  may  have  their  private  code,  as  they 
doubtless  had  in  Gadara.  But  an  English  magistrate,  if 
called  upon  to  enforce  their  peculiar  laws,  would  dismiss  the 
complainants  from  the  judgment  seat,  let  us  hope  with  more 
politeness  than  Gallio  did  in  a  like  case,  but  quite  as  firmly. 
Moreover,  in  the  matter  of  keeping  pigs,  we  may  be  quite 
certain  that  Gadarene  law  left  everybody  free  to  do  as  he 
pleased,  indeed  encouraged  the  practice  rather  than  other- 
wise. Not  only  was  pork  one  of  the  commonest  and  one  of 
the  most  favorite  articles  of  Roman  diet ;  but,  to  both  Greeks 
and  Romans,  the  pig  was  a  sacrificial  animal  of  high  im- 


434  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

portance.  Sucking  pigs  played  an  important  part  in  Hel- 
lenic purificatory  rites ;  and  everybody  knows  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  Koman  suovetaurilia,  depicted  on  so  many  bas- 
reliefs. 

Under  these  circumstances,  only  the  extreme  need  of  a 
despairing  "  reconciler  "  drowning  in  a  sea  of  adverse  facts, 
can  explain  the  catching  at  such  a  poor  straw  as  the  reckless 
guess  that  the  swineherds  of  the  "  country  of  the  Gadarenes  " 
were  erring  Jews,  doing  a  little  clandestine  business  on  their 
own  account.  The  endeavor  to  justify  the  asserted  destruc- 
tion of  the  swine  by  the  analogy  of  breaking  open  a  cask  of 
smuggled  spirits,  and  wasting  their  contents  on  the  ground, 
is  curiously  unfortunate.  Does  Mr.  Gladstone  mean  to  sug- 
gest that  a  Frenchman  landing  at  Dover,  and  coming  upon  a 
cask  of  smuggled  brandy  in  the  course  of  a  stroll  along  the 
cliffs,  has  the  right  to  break  it  open  and  waste  its  contents  on 
the  ground  ?  Yet  the  party  of  Galileans  who,  according  to 
the  narrative,  landed  and  took  a  walk  on  the  Gadarene  terri- 
tory, were  as  much  foreigners  in  the  Decapolis  as  Frenchmen 
would  be  at  Dover.  Herod  Antipas,  their  sovereign,  had  no 
jurisdiction  in  the  Decapolis — they  were  strangers  and  aliens, 
with  no  more  right  to  interfere  with  a  pig-keeping  Hebrew 
than  I  have  a  right  to  interfere  with  an  English  professor  of 
the  Israelitic  faith,  if  I  see  a  slice  of  ham  on  his  plate.  Ac- 
cording to  the  law  of  the  country  in  which  these  Galilean 
foreigners  found  themselves,  men  might  keep  pigs  if  they 
pleased.  If  the  men  who  kept  them  were  Jews,  it  might  be 
permissible  for  the  strangers  to  inform  the  religious  authority 
acknowledged  by  the  Jews  of  Gadara,  but  to  interfere  them- 
selves in  such  a  matter  was  a  step  devoid  of  either  moral  or 
legal  justification. 

Suppose  a  modern  English  Sabbatarian  fanatic,  who  be- 
lieves, on  the  strength  of  his  interpretation  of  the  fourth 
commandment,  that  it  is  a  deadly  sin  to  work  on  the  "  Lord's 
Day,"  sees  a  -fellow  Puritan  yielding  to  the  temptation  of 
getting  in  his  harvest  on  a  fine  Sunday  morning — is  the 


THE  KEEPERS  OF  THE  HERD  OF  SWINE.    435 

former  justified  in  setting  fire  to  the  latter's  corn  ?    Would 
not  an  English  court  of  justice  speedily  teach  him  better  ? 

In  truth,  the  government  which  permits  private  persons, 
on  any  pretext  (especially  pious  and  patriotic  pretexts),  to 
take  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  fails  in  the  performance 
of  the  primary  duties  of  all  governments ;  while  those  who 
set  the  example  of  such  acts,  or  who  approve  them,  or  who 
fail  to  disapprove  them,  are  doing  their  best  to  dissolve  civil 
society — they  are  compassers  of  illegality  and  fautors  of  im- 
morality. 

I  fully  understand  that  Mr.  Gladstone  may  not  see  the 
matter  in  this  light,  He  may  possibly  consider  that  the 
union  of  Gadara  with  the  Decapolis  by  Augustus  was  a 
"  blackguard  "  transaction,  which  deprived  Hellenic  Gadarene 
law  of  all  moral  force ;  and  that  it  was  quite  proper  for  a 
Jewish  Galilean,  going  back  to  the  time  when  the  land  of  the 
Girgashites  was  given  to  his  ancestors,  some  1,500  years  be- 
fore, to  act  as  if  the  state  of  things  which  ought  to  obtain  in 
territory  which  traditionally,  at  any  rate,  belonged  to  his 
forefathers,  did  really  exist.  And,  that  being  so,  I  can  only 
say  I  do  not  agree  with  him,  but  leave  the  matter  to  the  ap- 
preciation of  those  of  our  countrymen,  happily  not  yet  the 
minority,  who  believe  that  the  first  condition  of  enduring 
liberty  is  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  land. 

The  end  of  the  month  drawing  nigh,  I  thought  it  well  to 
send  away  the  manuscript  of  the  foregoing  pages  yesterday, 
leaving  open,  in  my  own  mind,  the  possibility  of  adding  a 
succinct  characterization  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  controversial 
methods  as  illustrated  therein.  This  morning,  however,  I 
had  the  pleasure  of  reading  a  speech  which  I  think  must 
satisfy  the  requirements  of  the  most  fastidious  of  controver- 
sial artists ;  and  there  occurs  in  it  so  concise,  yet  so  complete, 
a  delineation  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  way  of  dealing  with  dis- 
puted questions  of  another  kind,  that  no  poor  effort  of  mine 
could  better  it  as  a  description  of  the  aspect  which  his  treat- 


436  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

ment  of  scientific,  historical,  and  critical  questions  presents 
to  me. 

The  smallest  examination  would  have  told  a  man  of  his 
capacity  and  of  his  experience  that  he  was  uttering  the  grossest 
exaggerations,  that  he  was  basing  arguments  upon  the  slightest 
hypotheses,  and  that  his  discussions  only  had  to  be  critically  ex- 
amined by  the  most  careless  critic  in  order  to  show  their  intrin- 
sic hollowness. 

Those  who  have  followed  me  through  this  paper  will 
hardly  dispute  the  justice  of  this  judgment,  severe  as  it  is. 
But  the  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland  has  science  in  the  blood ; 
and  has  the  advantage  of  a  natural,  as  well  as  a  highly  culti- 
vated, aptitude  for  the  use  of  methods  of  precision  in  investi- 
gation, and  for  the  exact  enunciation  of  the  results  thereby 
obtained. 


XV. 

ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTRO- 
VERSIAL METHODS. 

The  series  of  essays  in  defense  of  the  historical  accuracy 
of  the  Jewish  and  Christian  Scriptures  contributed  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  Good  Words,  having  been  revised  and  enlarged 
by  their  author,  appeared  last  year  as  a  separate  volume, 
under  the  somewhat  defiant  title  of  The  Impregnable  Rock  of 
Holy  Scripture. 

The  last  of  these  essays,  entitled  "  Conclusion,"  contains 
an  attack,  or  rather  several  attacks,  couched  in  language 
which  certainly  does  not  err  upon  the  side  of  moderation  or 
of  courtesy,  upon  statements  and  opinions  of  mine.  One  of 
these  assaults  is  a  deliberately  devised  attempt,  not  merely  to 
rouse  the  theological  prejudices  ingrained  in  the  majority  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  readers,  but  to  hold  me  up  as  a  person  who 
has  endeavored  to  besmirch  the  personal  character  of  the  ob- 
ject of  their  veneration.  For  Mr.  Gladstone  asserts  that  I 
have  undertaken  to  try  "  the  character  of  our  Lord "  (p. 
268) ;  and  he  tells  the  many  who  are,  as  I  think  unfortu- 
nately, predisposed  to  place  implicit  credit  in  his  asser- 
tions, that  it  has  been  reserved  for  me  to  discover  that 
Jesus  "  was  no  better  than  a  law-breaker  and  an  evil-doer ! " 
(p.  269). 

It  was  extremely  easy  for  me  to  prove,  as  I  did  in  the 
pages  of  this  Review  last  December,  that,  under  the  most 
favorable  interpretation,  this  amazing  declaration  must  be 
ascribed  to  extreme  confusion  of  thought.     And,  by  bringing 


438  CONTKOVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

an  abundance  of  good-will  to  the  consideration  of  the  sub- 
ject, I  have  now  convinced  myself  that  it  is  right  for  me  to 
admit  that  a  person  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  intellectual  acuteness 
really  did  mistake  the  reprobation  of  the  course  of  conduct 
ascribed  to  Jesus,  in  a  story  of  which  I  expressly  say  I  do  not 
believe  a  word,  for  an  attack  on  his  character  and  a  declara- 
tion that  he  was  "  no  better  than  a  law-breaker  and  evil- 
doer." At  any  rate,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  this  is  what  Mr. 
Gladstone  wished  to  be  believed  when  he  wrote  the  following 
passage : — 

I  must,  however,  in  passing,  make  the  confession  that  I  did 
not  state  with  accuracy,  as  I  ought  to  have  done,  the  precise 
form  of  the  accusation.  I  treated  it  as  an  imputation  on  the 
action  of  our  Lord;  he  replies  that  it  is  only  an  imputation  on 
the  narrative  of  three  evangelists  respecting  Him.  The  differ- 
ence, from  his  point  of  view,  is  probably  material,  and  I  there- 
fore regret  that  I  overlooked  it.* 

Considering  the  gravity  of  the  error  which  is  here  ad- 
mitted, the  fashion  of  the  withdrawal  appears  more  singular 
than  admirable.  From  my  "  point  of  view  " — not  from  Mr. 
Gladstone's  apparently — the  little  discrepancy  between  the 
facts  and  Mr.  Gladstone's  carefully  offensive  travesty  of  them 
is  "probably"  (only  "probably")  material.  However,  as 
Mr.  Gladstone  concludes  with  an  official  expression  of  regret 
for  his  error,  it  is  my  business  to  return  an  equally  official  ex- 
pression of  gratitude  for  the  attenuated  reparation  with  which 
I  am  favored. 

Having  cleared  this  specimen  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  contro- 
versial method  out  of  the  way,  I  may  proceed  to  the  next 
assault,  that  on  a  passage  in  an  article  on  Agnosticism  (Wine- 
teenth  Century,  February,  1889),  published  two  years  ago. 
I  there  said,  in  referring  to  the  Gadarene  story,  "  Everything 
I  know  of  law  and  justice  convinces  me  that  the  wanton  de- 
struction of  other  people's  property  is  a  misdemeanor  of  evil 

*  Nineteenth  Century,  February,  1891,  pp.  339-40. 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTROVERSIAL  METHODS.     439 

example."  On  this,  Mr.  Gladstone,  continuing  his  candid 
and  urbane  observations,  remarks  {Impregnable  Rock,  p. 
273)  that,  "  Exercising  his  rapid  judgment  on  the  text," 
and  "  not  inquiring  what  anybody  else  had  known  or  said 
about  it,"  I  had  missed  a  point  in  support  of  that  "  accusa- 
tion against  our  Lord  "  which  he  has  now  been  constrained 
to  admit  I  never  made. 

The  "  point "  in  question  is  that,  "  Gadara  was  a  city  of 
Greeks  rather  than  of  Jews,  from  whence  it  might  be  in- 
ferred that  to  keep  swine  was  innocent  and  lawful."  I  con- 
ceive that  I  have  abundantly  proved  that  Gadara  answered 
exactly  to  the  description  here  given  of  it ;  and  I  shall  show, 
by-and-by,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  has  used  language  which,  to 
my  mind,  involves  the  admission  that  the  authorities  of  the 
city  were  not  Jews.  But  I  have  also  taken  a  good  deal  of 
pains  to  show  that  the  question  thus  raised  is  of  no  impor- 
tance in  relation  to  the  main  issue.*  If  Gadara  was,  as  I 
maintain  it  was,  a  city  of  the  Decapolis,  Hellenistic  in  con- 
stitution and  containing  a  predominantly  Gentile  population, 
my  case  is  superabundantly  fortified.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
the  hypothesis  that  Gadara  was  under  Jewish  Government, 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  seems  sometimes  to  defend  and  some- 
times to  give  up,  were  accepted,  my  case  would  be  nowise 
weakened.  At  any  rate,  Gadara  was  not  included  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  tetrarch  of  Galilee ;  if  it  had  been,  the 
Galileans  who  crossed  over  the  lake  to  Gadara  had  no  official 


*  Neither  is  it  of  any  consequence  whether  the  locality  of  the  sup- 
posed miracle  was  Gadara,  or  Gerasa,  or  Gergesa.  But  I  may  say  that 
1  was  well  acquainted  with  Origen's  opinion  respecting  Gergesa.  It  is 
fully  discussed  and  rejected  in  Riehm's  Eandworterbuch.  In  Kitto's 
Biblical  Cyclopcedia  (ii.  p.  51)  Professor  Porter  remarks  that  Origen 
merely  "  conjectures  "  that  Gergesa  was  indicated ;  and  he  adds,  "  Now, 
in  a  question  of  this  kind,  conjectures  can  not  be  admitted.  We  must 
implicitly  follow  the  most  ancient  and  creditable  testimony,  which 
clearly  pronounces  in  favor  of  TaSaprivStv.  This  reading  is  adopted  by 
Tischendorf,  Alford,  and  Tregelles. 


440  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

status;  and  they  had  no  more  civil  right  to  punish  law- 
breakers than  any  other  strangers. 

In  my  turn,  however,  I  may  remark  that  there  is  a 
"  point "  which  appears  to  have  escaped  Mr.  Gladstone's  no- 
tice. And  that  is  somewhat  unfortunate,  because  his  whole 
argument  turns  upon  it.  Mr.  Gladstone  assumes,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  that  pig-keeping  was  an  offense  against  the 
"  Law  of  Moses  " ;  and,  therefore,  that  Jews  who  kept  pigs 
were  as  much  liable  to  legal  pains  and  penalties  as  English- 
men who  smuggle  brandy  {Impregnable  Rock,  p.  274). 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  accordiug  to  the  Law,  as  it 
is  defined  in  the  Pentateuch,  the  pig  was  an  "  unclean  "  ani- 
mal, and  that  pork  was  a  forbidden  article  of  diet.  More- 
over, since  pigs  are  hardly  likely  to  be  kept  for  the  mere  love 
of  those  unsavory  animals,  pig-owning,  or  swine-herding, 
must  have  been,  and  evidently  was,  regarded  as  a  suspicious 
and  degrading  occupation  by  strict  Jews,  in  the  first  century 
a.d.  But  I  should  like  to  know  on  what  provision  of  the 
Mosaic  Law,  as  it  is  laid  down  in  the  Pentateuch,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone bases  the  assumption,  which  is  essential  to  his  case, 
that  the  possession  of  pigs  and  the  calling  of  a  swineherd 
were  actually  illegal.  The  inquiry  was  put  to  me  the  other 
day ;  and,  as  I  could  not  answer  it,  I  turned  up  the  article 
"  Schwein  "  in  Itiehm's  standard  Handworterbuch,  for  help 
out  of  my  difficulty;  but  unfortunately  without  success. 
After  speaking  of  the  martyrdom  which  the  Jews,  under 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  preferred  to  eating  pork,  the  writer 
proceeds : — 

It  may  be,  nevertheless,  that  the  practice  of  keeping  pigs 
may  have  found  its  way  into  Palestine  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
time,  in  consequence  of  the  great  increase  of  the  non-Jewish 
population ;  yet  there  is  no  evidence  of  it  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment;  the  great  herd  of  swine,  2000  in  number,  mentioned  in 
the  narrative  of  the  possessed,  was  feeding  in  the  territory  of 
Gadara,  which  belonged  to  the  Decapolis ;  and  the  prodigal  son 
became  a  swineherd  with  the  native  of  a  far  country  into  which 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S   CONTROVERSIAL   METHODS.     441 

he  had  wandered ;  in  neither  of  these  cases  is  there  reason  for 
thinking  that  the  possessors  of  these  herds  were  Jews.* 

Having  failed  in   my  search,  so  far,  I  took  up  the  next 
work  of  reference  at  hand,  Kitto's  Cyclopedia  (vol.  iii.  1876). 
There,  under  "  Swine,"  the  writer,  Colonel  Hamilton  Smith, 
seemed  at  first  to  give  me  what  I  wanted,  as  he  says  that 
swine    "  appear   to    have    been   repeatedly   introduced   and 
reared  by  the  Hebrew  people,  f  notwithstanding  the  strong 
prohibition  in  the  Law  of  Moses  (Is.  lxv.  4).*"     But,  in  the 
first  place,  Isaiah's  writings  form  no  part  of  the  "  Law  of 
Moses  " ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  the  people  denounced  by 
the  prophet  in  this  passage  are  neither  the  possessors  of  pigs, 
nor  swineherds,  but  those  "  which  eat  swine's  flesh  and  broth 
of  abominable  things  is  in  their  vessels."     And  when,  in  de- 
spair, I  turned  to  the  provisions  of  the  Law  itself,  my  diffi- 
culty was  not  cleared  up.     Leviticus  xi.  8  (Revised  Version) 
says,  in  reference  to  the  pig  and  other  unclean  animals :  "  Of 
their  flesh  ye  shall  not  eat,  and  their  carcasses  ye  shall  not 
touch."     In  the  revised  version  of  Deuteronomy  xiv.  8  the 
words  of  the  prohibition  are  identical,  and  a  skillful  refiner 
might  possibly  satisfy  himself,  even  if  he  satisfied  nobody 
else,  that  "  carcass  "  means  the  body  of  a  live  animal  as  well 
as  of  a  dead  one ;  and  that,  since  swineherds  could  hardly 
avoid  contact  with  their  charges,  their  calling  was  implicitly 
forbidden. J     Unfortunately,  the  authorized  version  expressly 
says  "  dead  carcass  "  ;  and  thus  the  most  rabbinically  minded 

*  I  may  call  attention,  in  passing,  to  the  fact  that  this  authority,  at 
any  rate,  has  no  sort  of  doubt  of  the  fact  that  Jewish  Law  did  not  rule 
in  Gadara  (indeed,  under  the  head  of  "  Gadara,"  in  the  same  work,  it  is 
expressly  stated  that  the  population  of  the  place  consisted  "  predomi- 
nantly of  heathens  "),  and  that  he  scouts  the  notion  that  the  Gadarene 
swineherds  were  Jews. 

f  The  evidence  adduced,  so  far  as  post-exile  times  are  concerned, 
appears  to  me  insufficient  to  prove  this  assertion. 

X  Even  Leviticus  xi,  26,  cited  without  reference  to  the  context,  wilL 
not  serve  the  purpose ;  because  the  swine  is  "  cloven  footed  "  (Lev.  xi.  7). 


442  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

of  reconcilers  might  find  his  casuistry  foiled  by  that  great 
source  of  surprises,  the  "  original  Hebrew."  That  such 
check  is  at  any  rate  possible,  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  the 
legal  uncleanness  of  some  animals,  as  food,  did  not  interfere 
with  their  being  lawfully  possessed,  cared  for,  and  sold  by 
Jews.  The  provisions  for  the  ransoming  of  unclean  beasts 
(Leviticus  xxvii.  27)  and  for  the  redemption  of  their  suck- 
lings (Numbers  xviii.  15)  sufficiently  prove  this.  As  the 
late  Dr.  Kalisch  has  observed  in  his  Commentary  on  Leviti- 
cus, part  ii.  p.  129,  note  : — 

Though  asses  and  horses,  camels  and  dogs,  were  kept  by  the 
Israelites,  they  were,  to  a  certain  extent,  associated  with  the  no- 
tion of  impurity ;  they  might  be  turned  to  profitable  account 
by  their  labor  or  otherwise,  but  in  respect  to  food  they  were 
an  abomination. 

The  same  learned  commentator  (loc.  cit.  p.  88)  proves  that 
the  Talmudists  forbade  the  rearing  of  pigs  by  Jews,  uncon- 
ditionally and  everywhere ;  and  even  included  it  under  the 
same  ban  as  the  study  of  Greek  philosophy,  "  since  both  alike 
were  considered  to  lead  to  the  desertion  of  the  Jewish  faith." 
It  is  very  possible,  indeed  probable,  that  the  Pharisees  of  the 
fourth  decade  of  our  first  century  took  as  strong  a  view  of 
pig-keeping  as  did  their  spiritual  descendants.  But,  for  all 
that,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  practice  was  illegal.  The 
stricter  Jews  could  not  have  despised  and  hated  swineherds 
more  than  they  did  publicans ;  but,  so  far  as  I  know,  there  is 
no  provision  in  the  Law  against  the  practice  of  the  calling 
of  a  tax-gatherer  by  a  Jew.  The  publican  was  in  fact  very 
much  in  the  position  of  an  Irish  process-server  at  the  present 
day — more,  rather  than  less,  despised  and  hated  on  account 
of  the  perfect  legality  of  his  occupation.  Except  for  certain 
sacrificial  purposes,  pigs  were  held  in  such  abhorrence  by  the 
ancient  Egyptians  that  swineherds  were  not  permitted  to  en- 
ter a  temple,  or  to  intermarry  with  other  castes ;  and  any  one 
who  had  touched  a  pig,  even  accidentally,  was  unclean.     But 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S   CONTROVERSIAL   METHODS.     443 

these  very  regulations  prove  that  pig-keeping  was  not  illegal ; 
it  merely  involved  certain  civil  and  religious  disabilities.  For 
the  Jews,  dogs  were  typically  "  unclean  "  animals ;  but  when 
that  eminently  pious  Hebrew,  Tobit,  "  went  forth  "  with  the 
angel  "  the  young  man's  dog"  went  "  with  them"  (Tobit  v. 
16)  without  apparent  remonstrance  from  the  celestial  guide. 
I  really  do  not  see  how  an  appeal  to  the  Law  could  have 
justified  any  one  in  drowning  Tobit's  dog,  on  the  ground  that 
his  master  was  keeping  and  feeding  an  animal  quite  as  "  un- 
clean "  as  any  pig.  Certainly  the  excellent  Eaguel  must  have 
failed  to  see  the  harm  of  dog-keeping,  for  we  are  told  that, 
on  the  travelers'  return  homeward,  "  the  dog  went  after 
them"  (xi.  4). 

Until  better  light  than  I  have  been  able  to  obtain  is 
thrown  upon  the  subject,  therefore,  it  is  obvious  that  Mr. 
Gladstone's  argumentative  house  has  been  built  upon  an  ex- 
tremely slippery  quicksand  ;  perhaps  even  has  no  foundation 
at  all. 

Yet  another  "  point "  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
Mr.  Gladstone,  who  is  so  much  shocked  that  I  attach  no 
overwhelming  weight  to  the  assertions  contained  in  the  syn- 
optic Gospels,  even  when  all  three  concur.  These  Gospels 
agree  in  stating,  in  the  most  express,  and  to  some  extent 
verbally  identical  terms,  that  the  devils  entered  the  pigs  at 
their  own  request,*  and  the  third  Gospel  (viii.  31)  tells  us 
what  the  motive  of  the  demons  was  in  asking  the  singular 
boon :  "  They  intreated  him  that  he  would  not  command 
them  to  depart  into  the  abyss."  From  this,  it  would  seem 
that  the  devils  thought  to  exchange  the  heavy  punishment  of 
transportation  to  the  abyss  for  the  lighter  penalty  of  impris- 
onment in  swine.  And  some  commentators,  more  ingenious 
than  respectful  to  the  supposed  chief  actor  in  this  extraordi- 

*  1st  Gospel :  "  And  the  devils  besought  him,  saying,  If  Thou  cast  us 
out  send  us  away  into  the  herd  of  swine."  2d  Gospel :  "  They  besought 
him,  saying,  Send  us  into  the  swine."  3d  Gospel :  "  They  intreated  him 
that  he  would  give  them  leave  to  enter  into  them." 


444  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

nary  fable,  have  dwelt,  with  satisfaction,  npon  the  very  un- 
pleasant quarter  of  an  hour  which  the  evil  spirits  must  have 
had,  when  the  headlong  rush  of  their  maddened  tenements 
convinced  them  how  completely  they  were  taken  in.  In  the 
whole  story,  there  is  not  one  solitary  hint  that  the  destruction 
of  the  pigs  was  intended  as  a  punishment  of  their  owners,  or 
of  the  swineherds.  On  the  contrary,  the  concurrent  testi- 
mony of  the  three  narratives  is  to  the  effect  that  the  catas- 
trophe was  the  consequence  of  diabolic  suggestion.  And, 
indeed,  no  source  could  be  more  appropriate  for  an  act  of 
such  manifest  injustice  and  illegality. 

I  can  but  marvel  that  modern  defenders  of  the  faith 
should  not  be  glad  of  any  reasonable  excuse  for  getting  rid  of 
a  story  which,  if  it  had  been  invented  by  Voltaire,  would  have 
justly  let  loose  floods  of  orthodox  indignation. 

Thus,  the  hypothesis  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone  so  fondly 
clings  finds  no  support  in  the  provisions  of  the  "  Law  of 
Moses  "  as  that  law  is  defined  in  the  Pentateuch ;  while  it  is 
wholly  inconsistent  with  the  concurrent  testimony  of  the  syn- 
optic Gospels,  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone  attaches  so  much 
weight.  In  my  judgment,  it  is  directly  contrary  to  every- 
thing which  profane  history  tells  us  about  the  constitution 
and  the  population  of  the  city  of  Gadara;  and  it  commits 
those  who  accept  it  to  a  story  which,  if  it  were  true,  would 
implicate  the  founder  of  Christianity  in  an  illegal  and  inequi- 
table act. 

Such  being  the  case,  I  consider  myself  excused  from  fol- 
lowing Mr.  Gladstone  through  all  the  meanderings  of  his  late 
attempts  to  extricate  himself  from  the  maze  of  historical  and 
exegetical  difficulties  in  which  he  is  entangled.  I  content 
myself  with  assuring  those  who,  with  my  paper  (not  Mr. 
Gladstone's  version  of  my  arguments)  in  hand,  consult  the 
original  authorities,  that  they  will  find  full  justification  for 
every  statement  I  have  made.  But  in  order  to  dispose  those 
who  can  not,  or  will  not,  take  that  trouble,  to  believe  that 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTROVERSIAL  METHODS.     445 

the  proverbial  blindness  of  one  that  judges  his  own  cause 
plays  no  part  in  inducing  me  to  speak  thus  decidedly,  I  beg 
their  attention  to  the  following  examination,  which  shall  be 
as  brief  as  I  can  make  it,  of  the  seven  propositions  in  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  professes  to  give  a  faithful  summary  of  my 
"  errors." 

When  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Holy 
See  declared  that  certain  propositions  contained  in  the  works 
of  Bishop  Jansen  were  heretical,  the  Jansenists  of  Port  Royal 
replied  that,  while  they  were  ready  to  defer  to  the  Papal  au- 
thority about  questions  of  faith  and  morals,  they  must  be 
permitted  to  judge  about  questions  of  fact  for  themselves ; 
and  that,  really,  the  condemned  propositions  were  not  to  be 
found  in  Jansen's  writings.  As  everybody  knows,  his  Holi- 
ness and  the  Grand  Monarque  replied  to  this,  surely  not  un- 
reasonable, plea  after  the  manner  of  Lord  Peter  in  the  Tale 
of  a  Tub.  It  is  therefore,  not  without  some  apprehension  of 
meeting  with  a  similar  fate,  that  I  put  in  a  like  plea  against 
Mr.  Gladstone's  Bull.  The  seven  propositions  declared  to  be 
false  and  condemnable,  in  that  kindly  and  gentle  way  which 
so  pleasantly  compares  with  the  authoritative  style  of  the 
Vatican  (No.  5  more  particularly),  may  or  may  not  be  true. 
But  they  are  not  to  be  found  in  anything  I  have  written. 
And  some  of  them  diametrically  contravene  that  which  I 
have  written.     I  proceed  to  prove  my  assertions. 

Prop.  1.  Throughout  the  paper  he  confounds  together 
what  I  had  distinguished,  namely  the  city  of  Gadara  and 
the  vicinage  attached  to  it,  not  as  a  mere  pomosrium,  but  as  a 
rural  district. 

In  my  judgment,  this  statement  is  devoid  of  founda- 
tion. 

In  my  paper  on  the  "  The  Keepers  of  the  Herd  of  Swine  " 
I  point  out,  at  some  length,  that  "  in  accordance  with  the 
ancient  Hellenic  practice,"  each  city  of  the  Decapolis  must 
have  been  "  surrounded  by  a  certain  amount  of  territory 
amenable  to  its  jurisdiction  : "  and  to  enforce  this  conclusion, 


446  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

I  quote  what  Josephus  says  about  the  "  villages  that  belonged 
to  Gadara  and  Hippos."  As  I  understand  the  term  pome- 
rium  or  pomoerium*  it  means  the  space  which,  according  to 
Roman  custom,  was  kept  free  from  buildings,  immediately 
within  and  without  the  walls  of  a  city ;  and  which  defined 
the  range  of  the  auspicia  urbana.  The  conception  of  a 
pomcerium  as  a  "  vicinage  attached  to  "  a  city,  appears  to  be 
something  quite  novel  and  original.  But  then,  to  be  sure,  I 
do  not  know  how  many  senses  Mr.  Gladstone  may  attach  to 
the  word  "  vicinage." 

Whether  Gadara  had  a  ponmrium,  in  the  proper  technical 
sense,  or  not,  is  a  point  on  which  I  offer  no  opinion.  But 
that  the  city  had  a  very  considerable  "  rural  district "  at- 
tached to  it  and,  notwithstanding  its  distinctness,  amenable 
to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Gentile  municipal  authorities,  is 
one  of  the  main  points  of  my  case. 

Prop.  2.  He  more  fatally  confounds  the  local  civil  govern- 
ment and  its  following,  including,  perhaps,  the  whole  wealthy 
class  and  those  attached  to  it,  with  the  ethnical  character  of 
the  general  population. 

Having  survived  confusion  No.  1,  which  turns  out  not  to 
be  on  my  side,  I  am  now  confronted  in  No.  2  with  a  "  more 
fatal  "error — and  so  it  is,  if  there  be  degrees  of  fatality; 
but,  again,  it  is  Mr.  Gladstone's  and  not  mine.  It  would  ap- 
pear, from  this  proposition  (about  the  grammatical  inter- 
pretation of  which,  however,  I  admit  there  are  difficulties), 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  holds  that  the  "  local  civil  government 
and  its  following  among  the  wealthy,"  were  ethnically  differ- 
ent from  the  "  general  population."  On  p.  348,  he  further  ad- 
mits that  the  "  wealthy  and  the  local  governing  power  "  were 
friendly  to  the  Romans.  Are  we  then  to  suppose  that  it 
was  the  persons  of  Jewish  "  ethnical  character  "  who  favored 
the  Romans,  while  those  of  Gentile  "  ethnical  character " 
were  opposed  to  them  ?     But  if  that  supposition  is  absurd, 

*  See  Marquarclt,  Romische  StaatsverwaUung,  Bd.  III.  p.  408. 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTROVERSIAL  METHODS.    447 

the  only  alternative  is  that  the  local  civil  government  was 
ethnically  Gentile.     This  is  exactly  my  contention. 

At  pp.  547  and  553  of  the  Essay  on  "  The  Keepers  of  the 
Herd  of  Swine  "  I  have  fully  discussed  the  question  of  the 
ethnical  character  of  the  general  population.  I  have  shown 
that,  according  to  Josephus,  who  surely  ought  to  have  known, 
Gadara  was  as  much  a  Gentile  city  as  Ptolemais ;  I  have 
proved  that  he  includes  Gadara  among  the  cities  "  that  rose 
up  against  the  Jews  that  were  among  them,"  which  is  a 
pretty  definite  expression  of  his  belief  that  the  "ethnical 
character  of  the  general  population  "  was  Gentile.  There  is 
no  question  here  of  Jews  of  the  Eoman  party  fighting  with 
Jews  of  the  Zealot  party,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  suggests.  It  is 
the  non- Jewish  and  an ti- Jewish  general  population  which  rises 
up  against  the  Jews  who  had  settled  "  among  them." 

Prop.  3.  His  one  item  of  direct  evidence  as  to  the  Gen- 
tile character  of  the  city  refers  only  to  the  former  and  not  to 
the  latter. 

More  fatal  still.  But,  once  more,  not  to  me.  I  adduce 
not  one,  but  a  variety  of  "  items  "  in  proof  of  the  non-Judaic 
character  of  the  population  of  Gadara :  the  evidence  of  his- 
tory; that  of  the  coinage  of  the  city;  the  direct  testimony 
of  Josephus,  just  cited — to  mention  no  others.  I  repeat,  if 
the  wealthy  people  and  those  connected  with  them — the 
"  classes "  and  the  "  hangers  on  "  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  well- 
known  taxonomy — were,  as  he  appears  to  admit  they  were, 
Gentiles ;  if  the  "  civil  government "  of  the  city  was  in  their 
hands,  as  the  coinage  proves  it  was  ;  what  becomes  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  original  proposition  in  The  Impregnable  Rock  of 
Scripture  that  "  the  population  of  Gadara,  and  still  less  (if 
less  may  be)  the  population  of  the  neighborhood,"  were 
"  Hebrews  bound  by  the  the  Mosaic  law  "  ?  And  what  is 
the  importance  of  estimating  the  precise  proportion  of  He- 
brews who  may  have  resided,  either  in  the  city  of  Gadara 
or  in  its  dependent  territory,  when,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  now 
seems  to  admit  (I  am  careful  to  say  "  seems  ")  the  govern- 


44:8  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

merit,  and  consequently  the  law,  which  ruled  in  that  terri- 
tory and  denned  civil  right  and  wrong  was  Gentile  and  not 
Judaic  ?  But  perhaps  Mr.  Gladstone  is  prepared  to  main- 
tain that  the  Gentile  "  local  civil  government "  of  a  city  of 
the  Decapolis  administered  Jewish  Law ;  and  showed  their 
respect  for  it,  more  particularly  by  stamping  their  coinage 
with  effigies  of  the  Emperors. 

In  point  of  fact,  in  his  haste  to  attribute  to  me  errors 
which  I  have  not  committed,  Mr.  Gladstone  has  given  away 
his  case. 

Pkop.  4.  He  fatally  confounds  the  question  of  political 
party  ivith  those  of  nationality  and  of  religion,  and  assumes 
that  those  who  took  the  side  of  Rome  in  the  factions  that  pre- 
vailed could  not  be  subject  to  the  Mosaic  Law. 

It  would  seem  that  I  have  a  feline  tenacity  of  life ;  once 
more,  a  "fatal  error."  But  Mr.  Gladstone  has  forgotten  an 
excellent  rule  of  controversy ;  say  what  is  true,  of  course,  but 
mind  that  it  is  decently  probable.  Now  it  is  not  decently 
probable,  hardly  indeed  conceivable,  that  any  one  who  has 
read  Josephus,  or  any  other  historian  of  the  Jewish  war, 
should  be  unaware  that  there  were  Jews  (of  whom  Josephus 
himself  was  one)  who  "  Eomanized  "  and,  more  or  less  openly, 
opposed  the  war  party.  But,  however,  that  may  be,  I  assert 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  neither  has  produced,  nor  can  produce,  a 
passage  of  my  writing  which  affords  the  slightest  foundation 
for  this  particular  article  of  his  indictment. 

Peop.  5.  His  examination  of  the  text  of  Josephus  is  alike 
one-sided,  inadequate,  and  erroneous. 

Easy  to  say,  hard  to  prove.  So  long  as  the  authorities 
whom  I  have  cited  are  on  my  side,  I  do  not  know  why  this 
singularly  temperate  and  convincing  dictum  should  trouble 
me.  I  have  yet  to  become  acquainted  with  Mr.  Gladstone's 
claims  to  speak  with  an  authority  equal  to  that  of  scholars  of 
the  rank  of  Schiirer,  whose  obviously  just  and  necessary 
emendations  he  so  unceremoniously  pooh-poohs. 

Prop.  6.  Finally,  he  sets  aside,  on  grounds  not  critical 


MR..  GLADSTONE'S   CONTROVERSIAL   METHODS.     449 

or  historical,  but  partly  subjective,  the  primary  historical 
testimony  on  the  subject,  namely,  that  of  the  three  Synoptic 
Evangelists,  who  write  as  contemporaries  and  deal  directly 
with  the  subject,  neither  of  which  is  done  by  any  other  au- 
thority. 

Really  this  is  too  much  !  The  fact  is,  as  anybody  can  see 
who  will  turn  to  my  article  of  February,  1889,  out  of  which 
all  this  discussion  has  arisen,  that  the  arguments  upon  which 
I  rest  the  strength  of  my  case  touching  the  swine-miracle, 
are  exactly  "  historical "  and  "  critical."  Expressly,  and  in 
words  that  can  not  be  misunderstood,  I  refuse  to  rest  on 
what  Mr.  Gladstone  calls  "  subjective  "  evidence.  I  abstain 
from  denying  the  possibility  of  the  Gadarene  occurrence,  and 
I  even  go  so  far  as  to  speak  of  some  physical  analogies  to 
possession.  In  fact,  my  quondam  opponent,  Dr.  Wace, 
shrewdly,  but  quite  fairly,  made  the  most  of  these  admis- 
sions, and  stated  that  I  had  removed  the  only  "  consideration 
which  would  have  been  a  serious  obstacle  "  in  the  way  of  his 
belief  in  the  Gadarene  story.* 

So  far  from  setting  aside  the  authority  of  the  synoptics 
on  "subjective"  grounds,  I  have  taken  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  to  show  that  my  non-belief  in  the  story  is  based 
upon  what  appears  to  me  to  be  evident;  firstly,  that  the 
accounts  of  the  three  synoptic  Gospels  are  not  independent, 
but  are  founded  upon  a  common  source ;  secondly,  that,  even 
if  the  story  of  the  common  tradition  proceeded  from  a  con- 
temporary, it  would  still  be  worthy  of  very  little  credit,  see- 
ing the  manner  in  which  the  legends  about  mediaeval  mira- 
cles have  been  propounded  by  contemporaries.  And  in 
illustration  of  this  position  I  wrote  a  special  essay  about  the 
miracles  reported  by  Eginhard.f 

In  truth,  one  need  go  no  further  than  Mr.  Gladstone's 

*  Nineteenth  Century,  March,  1889  (p.  362). 

f  "  The  Value  of  Witness  to  the  Miraculous."  Nineteenth  Century, 
March,  1889. 

20 


450  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

sixth  proposition  to  be  convinced  that  contemporary  testi- 
mony, even  of  well-known  and  distinguished  persons,  may  be 
but  a  very  frail  reed  for  the  support  of  the  historian,  when 
theological  prepossession  blinds  the  witness.* 

Prop.  7.  And  he  treats  the  entire  question,  in  the  nar- 
rowed form  in  which  it  arises  upon  secular  testimony,  as  if 
it  were  capable  of  a  solution  so  clear  and  summary  as  to  war- 
rant the  use  of  the  extremest  iveapons  of  controversy  against 
those  who  presume  to  differ  from  him. 

The  six  heretical  propositions  which  have  gone  before  are 
enunciated  with  sufficient  clearness  to  enable  me  to  prove 
without  any  difficulty  that,  whosoever  they  are,  they  are  not 
mine.  But  number  seven,  I  confess,  is  too  hard  for  me.  I 
can  not  undertake  to  contradict  that  which  I  do  not  under- 
stand. 

*  I  can  not  ask  the  Editor  of  this  Review  to  reprint  pages  of  an  old 
article, — but  the  following  passages  sufficiently  illustrate  the  extent  and 
the  character  of  the  discrepancy  between  the  facts  of  the  case  and  Mr. 
Gladstone's  account  of  them : — 

"  Now,  in  the  Gadarene  affair,  I  do  not  think  I  am  unreasonably 
skeptical  if  I  say  that  the  existence  of  demons  who  can  be  transferred 
from  a  man  to  a  pig  does  thus  contravene  probability.  Let  me  be  per- 
fectly candid.  I  admit  I  have  no  a  priori  objection  to  offer.  ...  1 
declare,  as  plainly  as  I  can,  that  I  am  unable  to  show  cause  why  these 
transferable  devils  should  not  exist." .  .  .  ("  Agnosticism,"  Nineteenth 
Century,  1889,  p.  177). 

"  What  then  do  we  know  about  the  originator,  or  originators,  of  this 
groundwork — of  that  threefold  tradition  which  all  three  witnesses  (in 
Paley's  phrase)  agree  upon — that  we  should  allow  their  mere  statements 
to  outweigh  the  counter  arguments  of  humanity,  of  common  sense,  of 
exact  science,  and  to  imperil  the  respect  which  all  would  be  glad  to  be 
able  to  render  to  their  Master?"  (ibid.  p.  175). 

I  then  go  on  through  a  couple  of  pages  to  discuss  the  value  of  the 
evidence  of  the  synoptics  on  critical  and  historical  grounds.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone cites  the  essay  from  which  these  passages  are  taken,  whence  I  sup- 
pose he  has  read  it ;  though  it  may  be  that  he  shares  the  impatience  of 
Cardinal  Manning  where  my  writings  are  concerned.  Such  impatience 
will  account  for,  though  it  will  not  excuse,  his  sixth  proposition. 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S   CONTROVERSIAL   METHODS.     451 

What  is  the  "  entire  question  "  which  "  arises  "  in  a  "  nar- 
rowed form  "  upon  "  secular  testimony  "  ?  After  much  guess- 
ing, I  am  fain  to  give  up  the  conundrum.  The  "  question  " 
may  be  the  ownership  of  the  pigs ;  or  the  ethnological  char- 
acter of  the  Gadarenes ;  or  the  propriety  of  meddling  with 
other  people's  property  without  legal  warrant.  And  each  of 
these  questions  might  be  so  "  narrowed  "  when  it  arose  on 
"  secular  testimony "  that  I  should  not  know  where  I  was. 
So  I  am  silent  on  this  part  of  the  proposition. 

But  I  do  dimly  discern  in  the  latter  moiety  of  this  mys- 
terious paragraph  a  reproof  of  that  use  of  "  the  extremest 
weapons  of  controversy  "  which  is  attributed  to  me.  Upon 
which  I  have  to  observe  that  I  guide  myself  in  such  matters 
very  much  by  the  maxim  of  a  great  statesman,  "  Do  ut  des." 
If  Mr.  Gladstone  objects  to  the  employment  of  such  weapons 
in  defense,  he  would  do  well  to  abstain  from  them  in  attack. 
He  should  not  frame  charges  which  he  has,  afterward,  to 
admit  are  erroneous,  in  language  of  carefully  calculated  of- 
fensiveness  {Impregnable  Rock,  pp.  269-70) ;  he  should  not 
assume  that  persons  with  whom  he  disagrees  are  so  reck- 
lessly unconscientious  as  to  evade  the  trouble  of  inquiring 
what  has  been  said  or  known  about  a  grave  question  (Im- 
pregnable Rock,  p.  273) ;  he  should  not  qualify  the  results  of 
careful  thought  as  "  hand-over-head  reasoning "  (Impreg- 
nable Roch,  p.  274) ;  he  should  not,  as  in  the  extraordinary 
propositions  which  I  have  just  analyzed,  make  assertions  re- 
specting his  opponent's  position  and  arguments  which  are 
contradicted  by  the  plainest  facts. 

Persons  who,  like  myself,  having  spent  their  lives  outside 
the  political  world,  yet  take  a  mild  and  philosophical  con- 
cern in  what  goes  on  in  it,  often  find  it  difficult  to  under- 
stand what  our  neighbors  call  the  psychological  moment  of 
this  or  that  party  leader;  and  are,  occasionally,  loath  to  be- 
lieve in  the  seeming  conditions  of  certain  kinds  of  success. 
And  when  some  chieftain,  famous  in  political  warfare,  ad- 
ventures into  the  region  of  letters  or  of  science,  in  full  con- 


452  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

fidence  that  the  methods  which  have  brought  fame  and 
honor  in  his  own  province  will  answer  there,  he  is  apt  to 
forget  that  he  will  be  judged  by  these  people,  on  whom 
rhetorical  artifices  have  long  ceased  to  take  effect;  and  to 
whom  mere  dexterity  in  putting  together  cleverly  ambiguous 
phrases,  and  even  the  great  art  of  offensive  misrepresenta- 
tion, are  unspeakably  wearisome.  And,  if  that  weariness 
finds  its  expression  in  sarcasm,  the  offender  really  has  no 
right  to  cry  out.  Assuredly,  ridicule  is  no  test  of  truth,  but 
it  is  the  righteous  meed  of  some  kinds  of  error.  Nor  ought 
the  attempt  to  confound  the  expression  of  a  revolted  sense 
of  fair  dealing  with  arrogant  impatience  of  contradiction,  to 
restrain  those  to  whom  "the  extreme  weapons  of  contro- 
versy "  come  handy  from  using  them.  The  function  of  po- 
lice in  the  intellectual,  if  not  in  the  civil,  economy  may  some- 
times be  legitimately  discharged  by  volunteers. 

Some  time  ago,  in  one  of  the  many  criticisms  with  which 
I  am  favored,  I  met  with  the  remark  that,  at  our  time  of 
life,  Mr.  Gladstone  and  I  might  be  better  occupied  than  in 
fighting  over  the  Gadarene  pigs.  And,  if  these  too  famous 
swine  were  the  only  parties  to  the  suit,  I,  for  my  part,  should 
fully  admit  the  justice  of  the  rebuke.  But,  under  the  benefi- 
cent rule  of  the  Court  of  Chancery,  in  former  times,  it  was 
not  uncommon  that  a  quarrel  about  a  few  perches  of  worth- 
less land  ended  in  the  ruin  of  ancient  families  and  the  in- 
gulfing of  great  estates;  and  I  think  that  our  admonisher 
failed  to  observe  the  analogy — to  note  the  momentous  conse- 
quences of  the  judgment  which  may  be  awarded  in  the 
present  apparently  insignificant  action  in  re  the  swineherds 
of  Gadara. 

The  immediate  effect  of  such  judgment  will  be  the  de- 
cision of  the  question  whether  the  men  of  the  nineteenth 
century  are  to  adopt  the  demonology  of  the  men  of  the  first 
century  as  divinely  revealed  truth,  or  to  reject  it  as  degrading 
falsity.     The  reverend  Principal  of  King's  College  has  de- 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTROVERSIAL  METHODS.     453 

livered  his  judgment  in  perfectly  clear  and  candid  terms. 
Two  years  since,  Dr.  Wace  said  that  he  believed  the  story  as 
it  stands;  and  consequently  he  holds,  as  a  part  of  divine 
revelation,  that  the  spiritual  world  comprises  devils,  who, 
under  certain  circumstances,  may  enter  men  and  be  trans- 
ferred from  them  to  four-footed  beasts.  For  the  distin- 
guished Anglican  divine  and  Biblical  scholar  that  is  part 
and  parcel  of  the  teachings  resjoecting  the  spiritual  world 
which  we  owe  to  the  founder  of  Christianity.  It  is  an  in- 
separable part  of  that  Christian  orthodoxy  which,  if  a  man 
rejects,  he  is  to  be  considered  and  called  an  "  infidel."  Ac- 
cording to  the  ordinary  rules  of  interpretation  of  language, 
Mr.  Gladstone  must  hold  the  same  view. 

If  antiquity  and  universality  are  valid  tests  of  the  truth 
of  any  belief,  no  doubt  this  is  one  of  the  beliefs  so  certified. 
There  are  no  known  savages,  nor  people  sunk  in  the  igno- 
rance of  partial  civilization,  who  do  not  hold  them.  The 
great  majority  of  Christians  have  held  them  and  still  hold 
them.  Moreover,  the  oldest  records  we  possess  of  the  early 
conceptions  of  mankind  in  Egypt  and  in  Mesopotamia  prove 
that  exactly  such  demonology,  as  is  implied  in  the  Gadarene 
story,  formed  the  substratum,  and,  among  the  early  Acca- 
dians,  apparently  the  greater  part,  of  their  supposed  knowl- 
edge of  the  spiritual  world.  M.  Lenormant's  profoundly  in- 
teresting work  on  Babylonian  magic  and  the  magical  texts 
given  in  the  Appendix  to  Professor  Sayce's  Hilbert  Lectures 
leave  no  doubt  on  this  head.  They  prove  that  the  doctrine 
of  possession,  and  even  the  particular  case  of  pig  possession,* 
were  firmly  believed  in  by  the  Egyptians  and  the  Mesopota- 
mians  before  the  tribes  of  Israel  invaded  Palestine.  And  it 
is  evident  that  these  beliefs,  from  some  time  after  the  exile 
and  probably  much  earlier,  completely  interpenetrated  the 

*  The  wicked,  before  being  annihilated,  returned  to  the  world  to 
disturb  men ;  they  entered  into  the  body  of  unclean  animals,  "  often 
that  of  a  pig,  as  on  the  Sarcophagus  of  Seti  I.  in  the  Soane  Museum."— 
Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic,  p.  88,  Editorial  Note. 


454:  CONTROVERTED   QUESTIONS. 

Jewish  mind,  and  thus  "became  inseparably  interwoven  with 
the  fabric  of  the  synoptic  Gospels. 

Therefore,  behind  the  question  of  the  acceptance  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  oldest  heathen  demonology  as  part  of  the 
fundamental  beliefs  of  Christianity,  there  lies  the  question 
of  the  credibility  of  the  Gospels,  and  of  their  claim  to  act  as 
our  instructors,  outside  that  ethical  province  in  which  they 
appeal  to  the  consciousness  of  all  thoughtful  men.  And 
still,  behind  this  problem,  there  lies  another — how  far  do 
these  ancient  records  give  a  sure  foundation  to  the  prodigious 
fabric  of  Christian  dogma  which  has  been  built  upon  them 
by  the  continuous  labors  of  speculative  theologians  during 
eighteen  centuries? 

I  submit  that  there  are  few  questions  before  the  men  of 
the  rising  generation  on  the  answer  to  which  the  future  hangs 
more  fatally  than  this.  We  are  at  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
Whether  the  twentieth  century  shall  see  a  recrudescence  of 
the  superstitions  of  mediaeval  papistry,  or  whether  it  shall 
witness  the  severance  of  the  living  body  of  the  ethical  ideal 
of  prophetic  Israel  from  the  carcass,  foul  with  savage  super- 
stitions and  cankered  with  false  philosophy,  to  which  the 
theologians  have  bound  it,  turns  upon  their  final  judgment 
of  the  Gadarene  tale. 

The  gravity  of  the  problems  ultimately  involved  in  the 
discussion  of  the  legend  of  Gadara  will,  I  hope,  excuse  a  per- 
sistence in  returning  to  the  subject,  to  which  I  should  not 
have  been  moved  by  merely  personal  considerations. 

With  respect  to  the  diluvial  invective  which  overflowed 
thirty-three  pages  of  this  Eeview  last  January,  I  doubt  not 
that  it  has  a  catastrophic  importance  in  the  estimation  of  its 
author.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  permitted  to  regard  it 
as  a  mere  spate  ;  noisy  and  threatening  while  it  lasted,  but 
forgotten  almost  as  soon  as  it  was  over.  Without  my  help,  it 
will  be  judged  by  every  instructed  and  clear-headed  reader ; 


MR.  GLADSTONE'S  CONTROVERSIAL  METHODS.     455 

and  that  is  fortunate,  because,  were  aid  necessary,  I  have 
cogent  reasons  for  withholding  it. 

In  an  article  characterized  by  the  same  qualities  of  thought 
and  diction,  entitled  "A  Great  Lesson,"  which  appeared  in 
this  Review  for  September,  1887,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  firstly, 
charged  the  whole  body  of  men  of  science  interested  in  the 
question  with  having  conspired  to  ignore  certain  criticisms  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  theory  of  the  origin  of  coral  reefs ;  and,  sec- 
ondly, he  asserted  that  some  person  unnamed  had  "  actually 
induced  "  Mr.  John  Murray  to  delay  the  publication  of  his 
views  on  that  subject  "  for  two  years." 

It  was  easy  for  me  and  for  others  to  prove  that  the  first 
statement  was  not  only,  to  use  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  favorite 
expression,  "  contrary  to  fact,"  but  that  it  was  without  any 
foundation  whatever.  The  second  statement  rested  on  the  Duke 
of  Argyll's  personal  authority.  All  I  could  do  was  to  demand 
the  production  of  the  evidence  for  it.  Up  to  the  present 
time,  so  far  as  I  know,  that  evidence  has  not  made  its  appear- 
ance ;  nor  has  there  been  any  withdrawal  of,  or  apology  for, 
the  erroneous  charge. 

Under  these  circumstances,  most  people  will  understand 
why  the  Duke  of  Argyll  may  feel  quite  secure  of  having  the 
battle  all  to  himself,  whenever  it  pleases  him  to  attack  me. 


XVI. 
HASISADKA'S  ADVENTUKE. 

Some  thousands  of  years  ago,  there  was  a  city  in  Mesopo- 
tamia called  Surippak.  One  night  a  strange  dream  came  to 
a  dweller  therein,  whose  name,  if  rightly  reported,  was  Hasisa- 
dra.  The  dream  foretold  the  speedy  coming  of  a  great  flood  ; 
and  it  warned  Hasisadra  to  lose  no  time  in  building  a  ship,  in 
which,  when  notice  was  given,  he,  his  family  and  friends,  with 
their  domestic  animals  and  a  collection  of  the  wild  creatures 
and  seed  of  plants  of  the  land,  might  take  refuge  and  be 
rescued  from  destruction.  Hasisadra  awoke,  and  at  once 
acted  upon  the  warning.  A  strong  decked  ship  was  built, 
and  her  sides  were  paid,  inside  and  out,  with  the  mineral  pitch, 
or  bitumen,  with  which  the  country  abounded  ;  the  vessel's 
seaworthiness  was  tested,  the  cargo  was  stowed  away,  and  a 
trusty  pilot  or  steersman  appointed. 

The  promised  signal  arrived.  Wife  and  friends  embarked ; 
Hasisadra,  following,  prudently  "  shut  the  door,"  or,  as  we 
would  say,  put  on  the  hatches  ;  and  ISTes-Hea,  the  pilot,  was 
left  alone  on  deck  to  do  his  best  for  the  ship.  Thereupon  a 
hurricane  began  to  rage ;  rain  fell  in  torrents ;  the  subter- 
ranean waters  burst  forth  ;  a  deluge  swept  over  the  land,  and 
the  wind  lashed  it  into  waves  sky  high  ;  heaven  and  earth 
became  mingled  in  chaotic  gloom.  For  six  days  and  seven 
nights  the  gale  raged,  but  the  good  ship  held  out  until,  on 
the  seventh  day,  the  storm  lulled.  Hasisadra  ventured  on 
deck;  and,  seeing  nothing  but  a  waste  of  waters  strewed 
with  floating  corpses  and  wreck,  wept  over  the  destruction  of 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  457 

his  land  and  people.  Far  away,  the  mountains  of  Nizir  were 
visible;  the  ship  was  steered  for  them  and  ran  aground 
upon  the  higher  land.  Yet  another  seven  days  passed  by. 
On  the  seventh,  Hasisadra  sent  forth  a  dove,  which  found  no 
resting  place  and  returned  ;  then  he  liberated  a  swallow, 
which  also  came  back ;  finally  a  raven  was  let  loose,  and  that 
sagacious  bird,  when  it  found  that  the  water  had  abated, 
came  near  the  ship  but  refused  to  return  to  it.  Upon  this, 
Hasisadra  liberated  the  rest  of  the  wild  animals,' which  imme- 
diately dispersed  in  all  directions,  while  he,  with  his  family 
and  friends,  ascending  a  mountain  hard  by,  offered  sacrifices 
upon  its  summit  to  the  gods. 

The  story  thus  given  in  summary  abstract,  told  in  an  ancient 
Semitic  dialect,  is  inscribed  in  cuneiform  characters  upon  a 
tablet  of  burnt  clay.  Many  thousands  of  such  tablets,  col- 
lected by  Assurbanipal,  King  of  Assyria  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventh  century  b.  c,  were  stored  in  the  library  of  his  palace 
at  Nineveh ;  and,  though  in  a  sadly  broken  and  mutilated 
condition,  they  have  yielded  a  marvelous  amount  of  informa- 
tion to  the  patient  and  sagacious  labor  which  modern  scholars 
have  bestowed  upon  them.  Among  the  [multitude  of  docu- 
ments of  various  kinds,  this  narrative  of  Hasisadra's  advent- 
ure has  been  found  in  a  tolerably  complete  state.  But 
Assyriologists  agree  that  it  is  only  a  copy  of  a  much  more 
ancient  work ;  and  there  are  weighty  reasons  for  believing 
that  the  story  of  Hasisadra's  flood  was  well  known  in  Meso- 
potamia before  the  year  2000  b.  c. 

No  doubt,  then,  we  are  in  presence  of  a  narrative  which 
has  all  the  authority  which  antiquity  can  confer ;  and  it  is 
proper  to  deal  respectfully  with  it,  even  though  it  is  quite  as 
proper,  and  indeed  necessary,  to  act  no  less  respectfully  to- 
ward ourselves ;  and,  before  professing  to  put  implicit  faith 
in  it,  to  inquire  what  claim  it  has  to  be  regarded  as  a  serious 
account  of  an  historical  event. 

It  is  of  no  use  to  appeal  to  contemporary  history,  although 


458  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  annals  of  Babylonia,  no  less  than  those  of  Egypt,  go  much 
further  back  than  2000  B.C.  All  that  can  be  said  is,  that  the 
former  are  hardly  consistent  with  the  supposition  that  any 
catastrophe,  competent  to  destroy  all  the  population,  has  be- 
fallen the  land  since  civilization  began,  and  that  the  latter 
are  notoriously  silent  about  deluges.  In  such  a  case  as  this, 
however,  the  silence  of  history  does  not  leave  the  inquirer 
wholly  at  fault.  Natural  science  has  something  to  say  when 
the  phenomena  of  nature  are  in  question.  Natural  science 
may  be  able  to  show,  from  the  nature  of  the  country,  either 
that  such  an  event  as  that  described  in  the  story  is  impossi- 
ble, or  at  any  rate  highly  improbable ;  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  it  is  consonant  with  probability.  In  the  former  case, 
the  narrative  must  be  suspected  or  rejected  ;  in  the  latter,  no 
such  summary  verdict  can  be  given :  on  the  contrary,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  story  may  be  true.  And  then,  if  certain 
strangely  prevalent  canons  of  criticism  are  accepted,  and  if 
the  evidence  that  an  event  might  have  happened  is  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  proof  that  it  did  happen,  Assyriologists  will  be  at 
liberty  to  congratulate  one  another  on  the  "  confirmation  by 
modern  science  "  of  the  authority  of  their  ancient  books. 

It  will  be  interesting,  therefore,  to  inquire  how  far  the 
physical  structure  and  the  other  conditions  of  the  region  in 
which  Surippak  was  situated  are  compatible  with  such  a  flood 
as  is  described  in  the  Assyrian  record. 

The  scene  of  Hasisadra's  adventure  is  laid  in  the  broad 
valley,  six  or  seven  hundred  miles  long,  and  hardly  anywhere 
less  than  a  hundred  miles  in  width,  which  is  traversed  by  the 
lower  courses  of  the  rivers  Euphrates  and  Tigris,  and  which 
is  commonly  known  as  the  "  Euphrates  valley."  Eising,  at 
the  one  end,  into  a  hill  country,  which  gradually  passes  into 
the  Alpine  heights  of  Armenia ;  and,  at  the  other,  dipping 
beneath  the  shallow  waters  of  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf, 
which  continues  in  the  same  direction,  from  northwest  to 
southeast,  for  some  eight  hundred  miles  farther,  the  floor  of 
the  valley  presents  a  gradual  slope,  from  eight  hundred  feet 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  459 

above  the  sea  level  to  the  depths  of  the  southern  end  of  the 
Persian  Gulf.  The  boundary  between  sea  and  land,  formed 
by  the  extremest  mudflats  of  the  delta  of  the  two  rivers,  is 
but  vaguely  defined ;  and,  year  by  year,  it  advances  seaward. 
On  the  northeastern  side,  the  western  frontier  ranges  of 
Persia  rise  abruptly  to  great  heights ;  on  the  southwestern 
side,  a  more  gradual  ascent  leads  to  a  table-land  of  less  eleva- 
tion, which,  very  broad  in  the  south,  where  it  is  occupied  by 
the  deserts  of  Arabia  and  of  Southern  Syria,  narrows,  north- 
ward, into  the  highlands  of  Palestine,  and  is  continued  by 
the  ranges  of  the  Lebanon,  the  Antilebanon,  and  the  Taurus, 
into  the  highlands  of  Armenia. 

The  wide  and  gently  inclined  plain,  thus  inclosed  between 
the  gulf  and  the  highlands,  on  each  side  and  at  its  upper  ex- 
tremity, is  distinguishable  into  two  regions  of  very  different 
character,  one  of  which  lies  north,  and  the  other  south  of  the 
parallel  of  Hit,  on  the  Euphrates.  Except  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  the  river,  the  northern  division  is  stony  and  scant- 
ily covered  with  vegetation,  except  in  spring.  Over  the 
southern  division,  on  the  contrary,  spreads  a  deep  alluvial 
soil,  in  which,  even  a  pebble  is  rare ;  and  which  though, 
under  the  existing  misrule,  mainly  a  waste  of  marsh  and  wil- 
derness, needs  only  intelligent  attention  to  become,  as  it  was 
of  old,  the  granary  of  western  Asia.  Except  in  the  extreme 
south,  the  rainfall  is  small  and  the  air  dry.  The  heat  in 
summer  is  intense,  while  bitterly  cold  northern  blasts  sweep 
the  plain  in  winter.  Whirlwinds  are  not  uncommon  ;  and, 
in  the  intervals  of  the  periodical  inundations,  the  fine,  dry, 
powdery  soil  is  swept,  even  by  moderate  breezes,  into  stifling 
clouds,  or  rather  fogs,  of  dust.  Low  inequalities,  elevations, 
here  and  depressions  there,  diversify  the  surface  of  the  allu- 
vial region.  The  latter  are  occupied  by  enormous  marshes, 
while  the  former  support  the  permanent  dwellings  of  the 
present  scanty  and  miserable  population. 

In  antiquity,  so  long  as  the  canalization  of  the  country 
was  properly  carried  out,  the  fertility  of  the  alluvial  plain 


460  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

enabled  great  and  prosperous  nations  to  have  their  home  in 
the  Euphrates  valley.  Its  abundant  clay  furnished  the  ma- 
terials for  the  masses  of  sun-dried  and  burned  bricks,  the 
remains  of  which,  in  the  shape  of  huge  artificial  mounds, 
still  testify  to  both  the  magnitude  and  the  industry  of  the 
population,  thousands  of  years  ago.  Good  cement  is  plenti- 
ful, while  the  bitumen,  which  wells  from  the  rocks  at  Hit 
and  elsewhere,  not  only  answers  the  same  purpose,  but  is 
used  to  this  day,  as  it  was  in  Hasisadra's  time,  to  pay  the  in- 
side and  the  outside  of  boats. 

In  the  broad  lower  course  of  the  Euphrates,  the  stream 
rarely  acquires  a  velocity  of  more  than  three  miles  an  hour, 
while  the  lower  Tigris  attains  double  that  rate  in  times  of 
flood.  The  water  of  both  great  rivers  is  mainly  derived  from 
the  northern  and  eastern  highlands  in  Armenia  and  in  Kur- 
distan, and  stands  at  its  lowest  level  in  early  autumn  and  in 
January.  But  when  the  snows  accumulated  in  the  upper 
basins  of  the  great  rivers,  during  the  winter,  melt  under  the 
hot  sunshine  of  spring,  they  rapidly  rise,*  and  at  length 
overflow  their  banks,  covering  the  alluvial  plain  with  a  vast 
inland  sea,  interrupted  only  by  the  higher  ridges  and  hum- 
mocks which  form  islands  in  a  seemingly  boundless  expanse 
of  water. 

In  the  occurrence  of  these  annual  inundations  lies  one  of 
several  resemblances  between  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates  and 
that  of  the  Nile.  But  there  are  important  differences.  The 
time  of  the  annual  flood  is  reversed,  the  Nile  being  highest 
in  autumn  and  winter,  and  lowest  in  spring  and  early 
summer.  The  periodical  overflows  of  the  Nile,  regulated  by 
the  great  lake  basins  in  the  south,  are  usually  punctual  in 
arrival,  gradual  in  growth,  and  beneficial  in  operation.  No 
lakes  are  interposed  between  the  mountain  torrents  of  the 

*  In  May,  1849,  the  Tigris  at  Bagdad  rose  22-$-  feet — 5  feet  above  its 
usual  rise — and  nearly  swept  away  the  town.  In  1831  a  similarly  ex- 
ceptional flood  did  immense  damage,  destroying  7,000  houses.  See 
Loftus,  Chaldea  and  Susiana,  p.  7. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  461 

upper  basis  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  and  their  lower 
courses.  Hence,  heavy  rain,  or  an  unusually  rapid  thaw  in 
the  uplands,  gives  rise  to  the  sudden  irruption  of  a  vast 
volume  of  water  which  not  even  the  rapid  Tigris,  still  less  its 
more  sluggish  companion,  can  carry  off  in  time  to  prevent 
violent  and  dangerous  overflows.  Without  an  elaborate  sys- 
tem of  canalization,  providing  an  escape  for  such  sudden 
excesses  of  the  supply  of  water,  the  annual  floods  of  the 
Euphrates,  and  especially  of  the  Tigris,  must  always  be 
attended  with  risk,  and  often  prove  harmful. 

There  are  other  peculiarities  of  the  Euphrates  valley 
which  may  occasionally  tend  to  exacerbate  the  evils  attendant 
on  the  inundations.  It  is  very  subject  to  seismic  distur- 
bances ;  and  the  ordinary  consequences  of  a  sharp  earthquake 
shock  might  be  seriously  complicated  by  its  effect  on  a  broad 
sheet  of  water.  Moreover,  the  Indian  Ocean  lies  within  the 
regions  of  typhoons ;  and  if,  at  the  height  of  an  inundation, 
a  hurricane  from  the  southeast  swept  up  the  Persian  Gulf, 
driving  its  shallow  waters  upon  the  delta  and  damming  back 
the  outflow,  perhaps  for  hundreds  of  miles  up-stream,  a 
diluvial  catastrophe,  fairly  up  to  the  mark  of  Hasisadra's, 
might  easily  result.* 

Thus  there  seems  to  be  no  valid  reason  for  rejecting 
Hasisadra's  story  on  physical  grounds.  I  do  not  gather  from 
the  narrative  that  the  "  mountains  of  Nizir  "  were  supposed 
to  be  submerged,  but  merely  that  they  came  into  view  above 
the  distant  horizon  of  the  waters,  as  the  vessel  drove  in  that 
direction.  Certainly  the  ship  is  not  supposed  to  ground  on 
any  of  their  higher  summits,  for  Hasisadra  has  to  ascend  a 


*  See  the  instructive  chapter  on  Hasisadra's  flood  in  Suess,  Das 
Antlitz  der  JEJrde,  Abth.  I.  Only  fifteen  years  ago  a  cyclone  in  the  Bay 
of  Bengal  gave  rise  to  a  flood  which  covered  3,000  square  miles  of  the 
delta  of  the  Ganges,  3  to  45  feet  deep,  destroying  100,000  people, 
innumerable  cattle,  houses,  and  trees.  It  broke  inland,  on  the  rising 
ground  of  Tipperah,  and  may  have  swept  a  vessel  from  the  sea  that  far, 
though  I  do  not  know  that  it  did. 


462  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

peak  in  order  to  offer  his  sacrifice.  The  country  of  Kizir  lay 
on  the  northeastern  side  of  the  Euphrates  valley,  about 
the  courses  of  the  two  rivers  Zab,  which  enter  the  Tigris 
where  it  traverses  the  plain  of  Assyria  some  eight  or  nine 
hundred  feet  above  the  sea ;  and,  so  far  as  I  can  judge  from 
maps  *  and  other  sources  of  information,  it  is  possible,  under 
the  circumstances  supposed,  that  such  a  ship  as  Hasisadra's 
might  drive  before  a  southerly  gale,  over  a  continuously 
flooded  country,  until  it  grounded  on  some  of  the  low  hills 
between  which  both  the  lower  and  the  upper  Zab  enter  upon 
the  Assyrian  plain. 

The  tablet  which  contains  the  story  under  consideration 
is  the  eleventh  of  a  series  of  twelve.  Each  of  these  answers 
to  a  month,  and  to  the  corresponding  sign  of  the  Zodiac. 
The  Assyrian  year  began  with  the  spring  equinox;  con- 
sequently, the  eleventh  month,  called  "  the  rainy,"  answers 
to  our  January-February,  and  to  the  sign  which  corresponds 
with  our  Aquarius.  The  aquatic  adventure  of  Hasisadra, 
therefore,  is  not  inappropriately  placed.  It  is  curious,  how- 
ever, that  the  season  thus  indirectly  assigned  to  the  flood  is 
not  that  of  the  present  highest  level  of  the  rivers.  It  is  too 
late  for  the  winter  rise  and  too  early  for  the  spring  floods. 

I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that,  so  far,  the  physical 
cross-examination  to  which  Hasisadra  has  been  subjected 
does  not  break  down  his  story.  On  the  contrary,  he  proves 
to  have  kept  it  in  all  essential  respects  f  within  the  bounds  of 
probability  or  possibility.  However,  we  have  not  yet  done 
with  him.  For  the  conditions  which  obtained  in  the 
Euphrates  valley,  four  or  five  thousand  years  ago,  may  have 
differed  to  such  an  extent  from  those  which  now  exist  that 

*  See  Cernik's  maps  in  Petermanns  MittTieilungeny  Erganzungshefte 
44  and  45,  1875-76. 

f  I  have  not  cited  the  dimensions  given  to  the  ship  in  most  trans- 
lations of  the  story,  because  there  appears  to  be  a  doubt  about  them. 
Haupt  {Keilinschriftliche  Sindfiuth-Bericht,  p.  13)  says  that  the  figures 
are  illegible. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  463 

we  should  be  able  to  convict  him  of  having  made  up  his  tale. 
But  here  again  everything  is  in  favor  of  his  credibility.  In- 
deed, he  may  claim  very  powerful  support,  for  it  does  not  lie 
in  the  mouths  of  those  who  accept  the  authority  of  the 
Pentateuch  to  deny  that  the  Euphrates  valley  was  what  it  is, 
even  six  thousand  years  back.  According  to  the  book  of 
Genesis,  Phrat  and  Hiddekel— the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris 
— are  coeval  with  Paradise.  An  edition  of  the  Scriptures, 
recently  published  under  high  authority,  with  an  elaborate  ap- 
paratus of  "  Helps  "  for  the  use  of  students — and  therefore,  as 
I  am  bound  to  suppose,  purged  of  all  statements  that  could  by 
any  possibility  mislead  the  young — assigns  the  year  B.  c.  4004 
as  the  date  of  Adam's  too  brief  residence  in  that  locality. 

But  I  am  far  from  depending  on  this  authority  for.  the 
age  of  the  Mesopotamian  plain.  On  the  contrary,  I  venture 
to  rely,  with  much  more  confidence,  on  another  kind  of 
evidence,  which  tends  to  show  that  the  age  of  the  great  rivers 
must  be  carried  back  to  a  date  earlier  than  that  at  which  our 
ingenuous  youth  is  instructed  that  the  earth  came  into  ex- 
istence. For,  the  alluvial  deposit  having  been  brought  down 
by  the  rivers,  they  must  needs  be  older  than  the  plain  it 
forms,  as  navvies  must  needs  antecede  the  embankment  pain- 
fully built  up  by  the  contents  of  their  wheel-barrows.  For 
thousands  of  years,  heat  and  cold,  rain,  snow,  and  frost,  the 
scrubbing  of  glaciers,  and  the  scouring  of  torrents  laden  with 
sand  and  gravel,  have  been  wearing  down  the  rocks  of  the 
upper  basins  of  the  rivers,  over  an  area  of  many  thousand 
squares  miles ;  and  these  materials,  ground  to  fine  powder  in 
the  course  of  their  long  journey,  have  slowly  subsided,  as  the 
water  which  carried  them  spread  out  and  lost  its  velocity  in 
the  sea.  It  is  because  this  process  is  still  going  on  that  the 
shore  of  the  delta  constantly  encroaches  on  the  head  of  the 
gulf  *  into  which  the  two  rivers  are  constantly  throwing  the 

*  It  is  probable  that  a  slow  movement  of  elevation  of  the  land  at 
one  time  contributed  to  the  result — perhaps  does  so  still. 


464  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

waste  of  Armenia  and  of  Kurdistan.  Hence,  as  might  be 
expected,  fluviatile  and  marine  shells  are  common  in  the 
alluvial  deposit ;  and  Lof tus  found  strata,  containing  subfossil 
marine  shells  of  species  now  living,  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  at 
Warka,  two  hundred  miles  in  a  straight  line  from  the  shore 
of  the  delta.*  It  follows  that,  if  a  trustworthy  estimate  of 
the  average  rate  of  growth  of  the  alluvial  can  be  formed,  the 
lowest  limit  (by  no  means  the  highest  limit)  of  age  of  the 
rivers  can  be  determined.  All  such  estimates  are  beset  with 
sources  of  error  of  very  various  kinds ;  and  the  best  of  them 
can  only  be  regarded  as  approximations  to  the  truth.  But  I 
think  it  will  be  quite  safe  to  assume  a  maximum  rate  of 
growth  of  four  miles  in  a  century  for  the  lower  half  of  the 
alluvial  plain. 

Now,  the  cycle  of  narratives  of  which  Hasisadra's  advent- 
ure forms  a  part  contains  allusions  not  only  to  Surippak,  the 
exact  position  of  which  is  doubtful,  but  to  other  cities,  such 
as  Erech.  The  vast  ruins  at  the  present  village  of  Warka 
have  been  carefully  explored  and  determined  to  be  all  that 
remains  of  that  once  great  and  nourishing  city,  "  Erech  the 
lofty."  Supposing  that  the  two  hundred  miles  of  alluvial 
country,  which  separates  them  from  the  head  of  the  Persian 
Gulf  at  present,  have  been  deposited  at  the  very  high  rate  of 
four  miles  in  a  century,  it  will  follow  that  4000  years  ago,  or 
about  the  year  2100  B.  c,  the  city  of  Erech  still  lay  forty 
miles  inland.  Indeed,  the  city  might  have  been  built  a  thou- 
sand years  earlier.  Moreover,  there  is  plenty  of  independent 
archaeological  and  other  evidence  that  in  the  whole  thousand 
years,  2000  to  3000  b.  c,  the  alluvial  plain  was  inhabited  by 
a  numerous  people,  among  whom  industry,  art,  and  literature 

*  At  a  comparatively  recent  period,  the  littoral  margin  of  the 
Persian  Gulf  extended  certainly  250  miles  farther  to  the  northwest 
than  the  present  embouchure  of  the  Shatt-el  Arab.  (Lof tus,  Quarterly 
Journal  of  the  Geological  Society,  1853,  p.  251.)  The  actual  extent  of 
the  marine  deposit  inland  can  not  be  defined,  as  it  is  covered  by  later 
fluviatile  deposits. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  4.(55 

had  attained  a  very  considerable  development.  And  it  can 
be  shown  that  the  physical  conditions  and  the  climate  of  the 
Euphrates  valley,  at  that  time,  must  have  been  extremely 
similar  to  what  they  are  now. 

Thus,  once  more,  we  reach  the  conclusion  that,  as  a  ques- 
tion of  physical  probability,  there  is  no  ground  for  objecting 
to  the  reality  of  Hasisadra's  adventure.  It  would  be  unrea- 
sonable to  doubt  that  such  a  flood  might  have  happened,  and 
that  such  a  person  might  have  escaped  in  the  way  described, 
any  time  during  the  last  5000  years.  And  if  the  postulate 
of  loose  thinkers  in  search  of  scientific  "  confirmations  "  of 
questionable  narratives — proof  that  an  event  may  have  hap- 
pened is  evidence  that  it  did  happen — is  to  be  accepted,  surely 
Hasisadra's  story  is  "  confirmed  by  modern  scientific  investi- 
gation "  beyond  all  cavil.  However,  it  may  be  well  to  pause 
before  adopting  this  conclusion,  because  the  original  story, 
of  which  I  have  set  forth  only  the  broad  outlines,  contains  a 
great  many  statements  which  rest  upon  just  the  same  founda- 
tion as  those  cited,  and  yet  are  hardly  likely  to  meet  with 
general  acceptance.  The  account  of  the  circumstances  which 
led  up  to  the  flood,  of  those  under  which  Hasisadra's  advent- 
ure was  made  known  to  his  descendant,  of  certain  remark- 
able incidents  before  and  after  the  flood,  are  inseparably 
bound  up  with  the  details  already  given.  And  I  am  unable 
to  discover  any  justification  for  arbitrarily  picking  out  some 
of  these  and  dubbing  them  historical  verities,  while  reject- 
ing the  rest  as  legendary  fictions.  They  stand  or  fall  to- 
gether. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  consideration  of  these  less  satis- 
factory details,  it  is  needful  to  remark  that  Hasisadra's  ad- 
venture is  a  mere  episode  in  a  cycle  of  stories  of  which  a  per- 
sonage, whose  name  is  provisionally  read  "  Izdubar,"  is  the 
center.  The  nature  of  Izdubar  hovers  vaguely  between  the 
heroic  and  the  divine;  sometimes  he  seems  a  mere  man, 
sometimes  approaches  so  closely  to  the  divinities  of  fire  and 
of  the  sun  as  to  be  hardly  distinguishable  from  them.     As  I 


466  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

have  already  mentioned,  the  tablet  which  sets  forth  Hasisa- 
dra's  perils  is  one  of  twelve ;  and,  since  each  of  these  repre- 
sents a  month  and  hears  a  story  appropriate  to  the  corre- 
sponding sign  of  the  Zodiac,  great  weight  must  be  attached 
to  Sir  Henry  Rawlinson's  suggestion  that  the  epos  of  Izdubar 
is  a  poetical  embodiment  of  solar  mythology. 

In  the  earlier  books  of  the  epos,  the  hero,  not  content 
with  rejecting  the  proffered  love  of  the  Chaldsean  Aphrodite, 
Istar,  freely  expresses  his  very  low  estimate  of  her  character ; 
and  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that,  even  in  this  early  stage 
of  human  experience,  men  had  reached  a  conception  of  that 
law  of  nature  which  expresses  the  inevitable  consequences  of 
an  imperfect  appreciation  of  feminine  charms.  The  injured 
goddess  makes  Izdubar's  life  a  burden  to  him,  until  at  last, 
sick  in  body  and  sorry  in  mind,  he  is  driven  to  seek  aid  and 
comfort  from  his  forbears  in  the  world  of  spirits.  So  this 
antitype  of  Odysseus  journeys  to  the  shore  of  the  waters  of 
death,  and  there  takes  ship  with  a  Chaldeean  Charon,  who 
carries  him  within  hail  of  his  ancestor  Hasisadra.  That  ven- 
erable personage  not  only  gives  Izdubar  instructions  how  to 
regain  his  health,  but  tells  him,  somewhat  a  propos  des  lottes 
(after  the  manner  of  venerable  personages),  the  long  story  of 
his  perilous  adventure ;  and  how  it  befell  that  he,  his  wife, 
and  his  steersman  came  to  dwell  among  the  blessed  gods, 
without  passing  through  the  portals  of  death  like  ordinary 
mortals. 

According  to  the  full  story,  the  sins  of  mankind  had  be- 
come grievous  ;  and,  at  a  council  of  the  gods,  it  was  resolved 
to  extirpate  the  whole  race  by  a  great  flood.  And,  once 
more,  let  us  note  the  uniformity  of  human  experience.  It 
would  appear  that,  four  thousand  years  ago,  the  obligations 
of  confidential  intercourse  about  matters  of  state  were  some- 
times violated — of  course  from  the  best  of  motives.  Ea,  one 
of  the  three  chiefs  of  the  Chaldasan  Pantheon,  the  god  of 
justice  and  of  practical  wisdom,  was  also  the  god  of  the  sea ; 
and,  yielding  to  the  temptation  to  do  a  friend  a  good  turn, 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  4G7 

irresistible  to  kindly  seafaring  folks  of  all  ranks,  he  warned 
Hasisadra  of  what  was  coming.  When  Bel  subsequently  re- 
proached him  for  this  breach  of  confidence,  Ea  defended  him- 
self by  declaring  that  he  did  not  tell  Hasisadra  anything ;  he 
only  sent  him  a  dream.  This  was  undoubtedly  sailing  very 
near  the  wind  ;  but  the  attribution  of  a  little  benevolent  ob- 
liquity of  conduct  to  one  of  the  highest  of  the  gods  is  a  trifle 
compared  with  the  truly  Homeric  anthropomorphism  which 
characterizes  other  parts  of  the  epos. 

The  Chaldsean  deities  are,  in  truth,  extremely  human ; 
and,  occasionally,  the  narrator  does  not  scruple  to  represent 
them  in  a  manner  which  is  not  only  inconsistent  with  our 
idea  of  reverence,  but  is  sometimes  distinctly  humorous.* 
When  the  storm  is  at  its  height,  he  exhibits  them  flying  in  a 
state  of  panic  to  Anu,  the  god  of  heaven,  and  crouching  be- 
fore his  portal  like  frightened  dogs.  As  the  smoke  of  Hasi- 
sadra's  sacrifice  arises,  the  gods,  attracted  by  the  sweet  savor, 
are  compared  to  swarms  of  flies.  I  have  already  remarked 
that  the  lady  Istar's  reputation  is  torn  to  shreds ;  while  she 
and  Ea  scold  Bel  handsomely  for  his  ferocity  and  injustice 
in  destroying  the  innocent  along  with  the  guilty.  One  is  re- 
minded of  Here  hung  up  with  weighted  heels ;  of  misleading 
dreams  sent  by  Zeus;  of  Ares  howling  as  he  flies  from  the 
Trojan  battlefield ;  and  of  the  very  questionable  dealings  of 
Aphrodite  with  Helen  and  Paris. 

But  to  return  to  the  story.  Bel  was,  at  first,  excluded 
from  the  sacrifice  as  the  author  of  all  the  mischief ;  which 
really  was  somewhat  hard  upon  him,  since  the  other  gods 
agreed  to  his  proposal.  But  eventually  a  reconciliation  takes 
place ;  the  great  bow  of  Anu  is  displayed  in  the  heavens ; 
Bel  agrees  that  he  will  be  satisfied  with  what  war,  pestilence, 
famine,  and  wild  beasts  can  do  in  the  way  of  destroying  men ; 
and  that,  henceforward,  he  will  not  have  recourse  to  extraor- 


*  Tiele  {Babylonisch-Assyrisclie  Geschichte,  pp.  572-3)  has  some  very- 
just  remarks  on  this  aspect  of  the  epos. 


468  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

dinary  measures.  Finally,  it  is  Bel  himself  who,  by  way  of 
making  amends,  transports  Hasisadra,  his  wife,  and  the  faith- 
ful Nes-Hea  to  the  abode  of  the  gods. 

It  is  as  indubitable  as  it  is  incomprehensible  to  most  of 
us,  that,  for  thousands  of  years,  a  great  people,  quite  as  intel- 
ligent as  we  are,  and  living  in  as  high  a  state  of  civilization 
as  that  which  had  been  attained  in  the  greater  part  of  Europe 
a  few  centuries  ago,  entertained  not  the  slightest  doubt  that 
Anu,  Bel,  Ea,  Istar,  and  the  rest,  were  real  personages,  pos- 
sessed of  boundless  powers  for  good  and  evil.  The  sincerity 
of  the  monarchs  whose  inscriptions  gratefully  attribute  their 
victories  to  Merodach,  or  to  Assur,  is  as  little  to  be  questioned 
as  that  of  the  authors  of  the  hymns  and  penitential  psalms 
which  give  full  expression  to  the  heights  and  depths  of  relig- 
ious devotion.  An  "  infidel "  bold  enough  to  deny  the  exist- 
ence, or  to  doubt  the  influence,  of  these  deities  probably  did 
not  exist  in  all  Mesopotamia  ;  and  even  constructive  rebellion 
against  their  authority  was  apt  to  end  in  the  deprivation,  not 
merely  of  the  good  name,  but  of  the  skin  of  the  offender. 
The  adherents  of  modern  theological  systems  dismiss  these 
objects  of  the  love  and  fear  of  a  hundred  generations  of 
their  equals,  offhand,  as  "  gods  of  the  heathen,"  mere  cre- 
ations of  a  wicked  and  idolatrous  imagination ;  and,  along 
with  them,  they  disown,  as  senseless,  the  crude  theology, 
with  its  gross  anthropomorphism  and  its  low  ethical  con- 
ception of  the  divinity,  which  satisfied  the  pious  souls  of 
Chaldaea. 

I  imagine,  though  I  do  not  presume  to  be  sure,  that  any 
endeavor  to  save  the  intellectual  and  moral  credit  of  Chal- 
dsen  religion,  by  suggesting  the  application  to  it  of  that  uni- 
versal solvent  of  absurdities,  the  allegorical  method,  would  be 
scouted ;  I  will  not  even  suggest  that  any  ingenuity  can  be 
equal  to  the  discovery  of  the  antitypes  of  the  personifications 
effected  by  the  religious  imagination  of  later  ages,  in  the  triad 
Anu,  Ea,  and.  Bel,  still  less  in  Istar.  Therefore,  unless  some 
plausible  reconciliatory  scheme  should  be  propounded  by  a 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  4G9 

Neo-Chaldaean  devotee  (and,  with  Neo-Buddhists  to  the  fore, 
this  supposition  is  not  so  wild  as  it  looks),  I  suppose  the 
moderns  will  continue  to  smile,  in  a  superior  way,  at  the 
grievous  absurdity  of  the  polytheistic  idolatry  of  these  ancient 
people. 

It  is  probably  a  congenital  absence  of  some  faculty  which 
I  ought  to  possess  which  withholds  me  from  adopting  this 
summary  procedure.  But  I  am  not  ashamed  to  share  David 
Hume's  want  of  ability  to  discover  that  polytheism  is,  in  it- 
self, altogether  absurd.  If  we  are  bound,  or  permitted,  to 
judge  the  government  of  the  world  by  human  standards,  it 
appears  to  me  that  directorates  are  proved,  by  familiar  expe- 
rience, to  conduct  the  largest  and  the  most  complicated  con- 
cerns quite  as  well  as  solitary  despots.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  see  why  the  hypothesis  of  a  divine  syndicate  should 
be  found  guilty  of  innate  absurdity.  Those  Assyrians,  in 
particular,  who  held  Assur  to  be  the  one  supreme  and  crea- 
tive deity,  to  whom  all  the  other  supernal  powers  were  sub- 
ordinate, might  fairly  ask  that  the  essential  difference  be- 
tween their  system  and  that  which  obtains  among  the  great 
majority  of  their  modern  theological  critics  should  be  demon- 
strated. In  my  apprehension  it  is  not  the  quantity,  but  the 
quality,  of  the  persons,  among  whom  the  attributes  of  divin- 
ity are  distributed,  which  is  the  serious  matter.  If  the  divine 
might  is  associated  with  no  higher  ethical  attributes  than 
those  which  obtain  among  ordinary  men  ;  if  the  divine  intel- 
ligence is  supposed  to  be  so  imperfect  that  it  can  not  foresee 
the  consequences  of  its  own  contrivances;  if  the  supernal 
powers  can  become  furiously  angry  with  the  creatures  of  their 
omnipotence  and,  in  their  senseless  wrath,  destroy  the  inno- 
cent along  with  the  guilty ;  or  if  they  can  show  themselves  to 
be  as  easily  placated  by  presents  and  gross  flattery  as  any  ori- 
ental or  occidental  despot ;  if,  in  short,  they  are  only  stronger 
than  mortal  men  and  no  better,  as  it  must  be  admitted 
Hasisadra's  deities  proved  themselves  to  be;  then,  surely, 
it  is  time  for  us  to  look  somewhat  closely  into  their  creden- 


470  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

tials,  and  to  accept  none  but  conclusive  evidence  of  their 
existence. 

To  the  majority  of  my  respected  contemporaries  this 
reasoning  will  doubtless  appear  feeble,  if  not  worse.  How- 
ever, to  my  mind,  such  are  the  only  arguments  by  which 
the  Chaldsean  theology  can  be  satisfactorily  upset.  So  far 
from  there  being  any  ground  for  the  belief  that  Ea,  Anu, 
and  Bel  are,  or  ever  were,  real  entities,  it  seems  to  me 
quite  infinitely  more  probable  that  they  are  products  of  the 
religious  imagination,  such  as  are  to  be  found  everywhere 
and  in  all  ages,  so  long  as  that  imagination  riots  uncon- 
trolled by  scientific  criticism. 

It  is  on  these  grounds  that  I  venture,  at  the  risk  of 
being  called  an  atheist  by  the  ghosts  of  all  the  principals 
of  all  the  colleges  of  Babylonia,  or  by  their  living  successors 
among  the  Neo-Chaldseans,  if  that  sect  should  arise,  to  ex- 
press my  utter  disbelief  in  the  gods  of  Hasisadra.  Hence, 
it  follows,  that  I  find  Hasisadra's  account  of  their  share  in 
his  adventure  incredible ;  and,  as  the  physical  details  of  the 
flood  are  inseparable  from  its  theophanic  accompaniments, 
and  are  guaranteed  by  the  same  authority,  I  must  let  them 
go  with  the  rest.  The  consistency  of  such  details  with 
probability  counts  for  nothing.  The  inhabitants  of  Chal- 
dsea  must  always  have  been  familiar  with  inundations; 
probably  no  generation  failed  to  witness  an  inundation 
which  rose  unusually  high,  or  was  rendered  serious  by  coin- 
cident atmospheric,  or  other,  disturbances.  And  the  memory 
of  the  general  features  of  any  exceptionally  severe  and  dev- 
astating flood,  would  be  preserved  by  popular  tradition  for 
long  ages.  What,  then,  could  be  more  natural  than  that  a 
Chaldasan  poet  should  seek  for  the  incidents  of  a  great 
catastrophe  among  such  phenomena?  In  what  other  way 
than  by  such  an  appeal  to  their  experience  could  he  so 
surely  awaken  in  his  audience  the  tragic  pity  and  terror? 
What  possible  ground  is  there  for  insisting  that  he  must 
have  had  some  individual  flood  in  view,  and  that  his  history 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  471 

is  historical,  in  the  sense  that  the  account  of  the  effects  of  a 
hurricane  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  in  the  year  1875,  is  his- 
torical ? 

More  than  three  centuries  after  the  time  of  Assurbanipal, 
Berosus  of  Babylon,  born  in  the  reign  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  wrote  an  account  of  the  history  of  his  country  in 
Greek.  The  work  of  Berosus  has  vanished ;  but  extracts 
from  it — how  far  faithful  is  uncertain — have  been  preserved 
by  later  writers.  Among  these  occurs  the  well-known  story 
of  the  Deluge  of  Xisuros,  which  is  evidently  built  upon 
the  same  foundation  as  that  of  Hasisadra.  The  incidents 
of  the  divine  warning,  the  building  of  the  ship,  the  send- 
ing out  of  birds,  the  ascension  of  the  hero,  betray  their  com- 
mon origin.  But  stories,  like  Madeira,  acquire  a  heightened 
flavor  with  time  and  travel ;  and  the  version  of  Berosus  is 
characterized  by  those  circumstantial  improbabilities  which 
habitually  gather  round  the  legend  of  a  legend.  The  later 
narrator  knows  the  exact  day  of  the  month  on  which  the 
flood  began.  The  dimensions  of  the  ship  are  stated  with 
Munchausenian  precision  at  five  stadia  by  two — say,  half  by 
one- fifth  of  an  English  mile.  The  ship  runs  aground  among 
the  "  Gordsean  mountains "  to  the  south  of  Lake  Van,  in 
Armenia,  beyond  the  limits  of  any  imaginable  real  inunda- 
tion of  the  Euphrates  valley  ;  and,  by  way  of  climax,  we  have 
the  assertion,  worthy  of  the  sailor  who  said  that  he  had 
brought  up  one  of  Pharaoh' s  chariot  wheels  on  the  fluke  of 
his  anchor  in  the  Eed  Sea,  that  pilgrims  visited  the  locality 
and  made  amulets  of  the  bitumen  which  they  scraped  off 
from  the  still  extant  remains  of  the  mighty  ship  of  Xisu- 
thros. 

Suppose  that  some  later  polyhistor,  as  devoid  of  critical 
faculty  as  most  of  his  tribe,  had  found  the  version  of  Berosus, 
as  well  as  another  much  nearer  the  original  story ;  that,  hav- 
ing too  much  respect  for  his  authorities  to  make  up  a  tertium 
quid  of  his  own,  out  of  the  materials  offered,  he  followed  a  prac- 


472  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

tice,  common  enough  among  ancient  and,  particularly,  among 
Semitic  historians,  of  dividing  both  into  fragments  and  piec- 
ing them  together,  without  troubling  himself  very  much  about 
the  resulting  repetitions  and  inconsistencies  ;  the  product  of 
such  a  primitive  editorial  operation  would  be  a  narrative  anal- 
ogous to  that  which  treats  of  the  Noachian  deluge  in  the 
book  of  Genesis.  For  the  Pentateuchal  story  is  indutiably  a 
patchwork,  composed  of  fragments  of  at  least  two,  different 
and  partly  discrepant,  narratives,  quilted  together  in  such  an 
inartistic  fashion  that  the  seams  remain  conspicuous.  And, 
in  the  matter  of  circumstantial  exaggeration,  it  in  some  re- 
spects excells  even  the  second-hand  legend  of  Berosus. 

There  is  a  certain  practicality  about  the  notion  of  taking 
refuge  from  floods  and  storms  in  a  ship  provided  with  a 
steersman  ;  but,  surely,  no  one  who  had  ever  seen  more  water 
than  he  could  wade  through  would  dream  of  facing  even  a 
moderate  breeze,  in  a  huge  three-storied  coffer,  or  box,  three 
hundred  cubits  long,  fifty  wide  and  thirty  high,  left  to  drift 
without  rudder  or  pilot.*  Not  content  with  giving  the  exact 
year  of  Noah's  age  in  which  the  flood  began,  the  Pentateuchal 
story  adds  the  month  and  the  day  of  the  month.  It  is  the 
Deity  himself  who  "  shuts  in  "  Noah.  The  modest  week  as- 
signed to  the  full  deluge  in  Hasisadra's  story  becomes  forty 
days,  in  one  of  the  Pentateuchal  accounts,  and  a  hundred  and 
fifty  in  the  other.  The  flood,  which,  in  the  version  of  Bero- 
sus, has  grown  so  high  as  to  cast  the  ship  among  the  mount- 
ains of   Armenia,  is  improved  upon  in  the  Hebrew  account 

*  In  the  second  volume  of  the  History  of  the  Euphrates  Expedition, 
p.  637,  Col.  Chesney  gives  a  very  interesting  account  of  the  simple  and 
rapid  manner  in  which  the  people  about  Tekrit  and  in  the  marshes  of 
Lemlum  construct  large  barges,  and  make  them  water-tight  with  bitu- 
men. Doubtless  the  practice  is  extremely  ancient ;  and  as  Colonel 
Chesney  suggests,  may  possibly  have  furnished  the  conception  of  Noah's 
ark.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  build  a  barge  44  ft.  long  by  11  ft.  wide  and 
4  ft.  deep  in  the  way  described ;  and  another  to  get  a  vessel  of  ten  times 
the  dimensions',  so  constructed,  to  hold  together. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  473 

until  it  covers  "  all  the  high  hills  that  were  under  the  whole 
heaven ; "  and,  when  it  begins  to  subside,  the  ark  is  left 
stranded  on  the  summit  of  the  highest  peak,  commonly 
identified  with  Ararat  itself. 

While  the  details  of  Hasisadra's  adventure  are,  at  least, 
compatible  with  the  physical  conditions  of  the  Euphrates 
valley ;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  involve  no  catastrophe  greater 
than  such  as  might  be  brought  under  those  conditions; 
many  of  the  very  precisely  stated  details  of  Noah's  flood 
contradict  some  of  the  best  established  results  of  scientific 
inquiry. 

If  it  is  certain  that  the  alluvium  of  the  Mesopotamian 
plain  has  been  brought  down  by  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates, 
then  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the  physical  structure  of  the 
whole  valley  has  persisted,  without  material  modification,  for 
many  thousand  years  before  the  date  assigned  to  the  flood. 
If  the  summits,  even  of  the  moderately  elevated  ridges  which 
immediately  bound  the  valley,  still  more  those  of  the  Kurdish 
and  Armenian  mountains,  were  ever  covered  by  water,  for 
even  forty  days,  that  water  must  have  extended  over  the 
whole  earth.  If  the  earth  was  thus  covered,  anywhere  be- 
tween 4000  and  5000  years  ago,  or,  at  any  other  time,  since 
the  higher  terrestrial  animals  came  into  existence,  they  must 
have  been  destroyed  from  the  whole  face  of  it,  as  the  Penta- 
teuchal  account  declares  they  were  three  several  times  (Gene- 
sis vii.  21,  22,  23),  in  language  which  can  not  be  made  more 
emphatic,  or  more  solemn,  than  it  is ;  and  the  present  popu- 
lation must  consist  of  the  descendants  of  emigrants  from  the 
ark.  And,  if  that  is  the  case,  then,  as  has  often  been  pointed 
out,  the  sloths  of  the  Brazilian  forests,  the  kangaroos  of  Aus- 
tralia, the  great  tortoises  of  the  Galapagos  islands,  must  have 
respectively  hobbled,  hopped,  and  crawled  over  many  thou- 
sand miles  of  land  and  sea  from  "  Ararat "  to  their  present 
habitations.  Thus,  the  unquestionable  facts  of  the  geographi- 
cal distribution  of  recent  land  animals,  alone,  form  an  in- 
superable obstacle  to  the  acceptance  of  the  assertion  that  the 

21 


474  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

kinds  of  animals  composing  the  present  terrestrial  fauna  have 
been,  at  any  time,  universally  destroyed  in  the  way  described 
in  the  Pentateuch. 

It  is  upon  this  and  other  unimpeachable  grounds,  that,  as 
I  ventured  to  say  some  time  ago,  persons  who  are  duly  con- 
versant with  even  the  elements  of  natural  science  decline  to 
take  the  Noachian  deluge  seriously ;  and  that,  as  I  also  pointed 
out,  candid  theologians,  who,  without  special  scientific  knowl- 
edge, have  appreciated  the  weight  of  scientific  arguments, 
have  long  since  given  it  up.  But,  as  Goethe  has  remarked, 
there  is  nothing  more  terrible  than  energetic  ignorance;* 
and  there  are,  even  yet,  very  energetic  people,  who  are  neither 
candid,  nor  clear-headed,  nor  theologians,  still  less  properly 
instructed  in  the  elements  of  natural  science,  who  make  pro- 
digious efforts  to  obscure  the  effect  of  these  plain  truths,  and 
to  conceal  their  real  surrender  of  the  historical  character  of 
Noah's  deluge  under  cover  of  the  smoke  of  a  great  discharge 
of  pseudo-scientific  artillery.  They  seem  to  imagine  that  the 
proofs  which  abound  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  of  large  oscil- 
lations of  the  relative  level  of  land  and  sea,  combined  with 
the  probability  that,  when  the  sea-level  was  rising,  sudden 
incursions  of  the  sea,  like  that  which  broke  in  over  Holland 
and  formed  the  Zuyder  Zee,  may  have  often  occurred,  can  be 
made  to  look  like  evidence  that  something  that,  by  courtesy, 
might  be  called  a  general  Deluge  has  really  taken  place. 
Their  discursive  energy  drags  misunderstood  truth  into  their 
service ;  and  "  the  glacial  epoch  "  is  as  sure  to  crop  up  among 
them  as  King  Charles's  head  in  a  famous  memorial — with 
about  as  much  appropriateness.  The  old  story  of  the  raised 
beach  on  Moel  Tryfaen  is  trotted  out ;  though,  even  if  the 
facts  are  as  yet  rightly  interpreted,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of 
evidence  that  the  change  of  sea-level  in  that  locality  was 
sudden,  or  that  glacial  Welshmen  would  have  known  it  was 

*  "  Es  ist  nichts  sehrecklicher  als  eine  tMtige  Unwissenheit."    Maxi- 
men  und  JReflexionen,  iii. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  475 

taking  place.*  Surely  it  is  difficult  to  perceive  the  relevancy 
of  bringing  in  something  that  happened  in  the  glacial  epoch 
(if  it  did  happen)  to  account  for  the  tradition  of  a  flood  in 
the  Euphrates  valley  between  2000  and  3000  B.  c.  But  the 
date  of  the  Noachian  flood  is  solidly  fixed  by  the  sole  author- 
ity for  it ;  no  shuffling  of  the  chronological  data  will  carry  it 
so  far  back  as  3000  B.  c. ;  and  the  Hebrew  epos  agrees  with 
the  Chaldaean  in  placing  it  after  the  development  of  a  some- 
what advanced  civilization.  The  only  authority  for  the  No- 
achian  deluge  assures  us  that,  before  it  visited  the  earth, 
Cain  had  built  cities ;  Jubal  had  invented  harps  and  organs ; 
while  mankind  had  advanced  so  far  beyond  the  neolithic, 
nay  even  the  bronze,  stage  that  Tubalcain  was  a  worker  in 
iron.  Therefore,  if  the  Noachian  legend  is  to  be  taken  for 
the  history  of  an  event  which  happened  in  the  glacial  epoch, 
we  must  revise  our  notions  of  pleistocene  civilization.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  Pentateuchal  story  only  means  some- 
thing quite  different,  that  happened  somewhere  else,  thou- 
sands of  years  earlier,  dressed  up,  what  becomes  of  its  credit 
as  history?  I  wonder  what  would  be  said  to  a  modern  his- 
torian who  asserted  that  Pekin  was  burned  down  in  1886,  and 
then  tried  to  justify  the  assertion  by  adducing  evidence  of 
the  Great  Fire  of  London  in  1666.  Yet  the  attempt  to  save 
the  credit  of  the  Noachian  story  by  reference  to  something 
which  is  supposed  to  have  happened  in  the  far  north,  in  the 
glacial  epoch,  is  far  more  preposterous. 

Moreover,  these  dust-raising  dialecticians  ignore  some  of 
the  most  important  and  well-known  facts  which  bear  upon 
the  question.  Anything  more  than  a  parochial  acquaintance 
with  physical  geography  and  geology  would  suffice  to  remind 
its  possessor  that  the  Holy  Land  itself  offers  a  standing  pro- 
test against  bringing  such  a  deluge  as  that  of  Noah  anywhere 

*  The  well-known  difficulties  connected  with  this  case  have  recently 
been  carefully  discussed  by  Mr.  Bell  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Geologi- 
cal Society  of  Glasgow. 


476  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

near  it,  either  in  historical  times  or  in  the  course  of  that 
pleistocene  period,  of  which  the  "  great  ice  age "  formed  a 
part. 

Judasa  and  Galilee,  Moab  and  Gilead,  occnpy  part  of  that 
extensive  tableland  at  the  summit  of  the  western  boundary 
of  the  Euphrates  valley,  to  which  I  have  already  referred. 
If  that  valley  had  ever  been  filled  with  water  to  a  height 
sufficient,  not  indeed  to  cover  a  third  of  Ararat,  in  the  north, 
or  half  some  of  the  mountains  of  the  Persian  frontier  in  the 
east,  hut  to  reach  even  four  or  five  thousand  feet,  it  must 
have  stood  over  the  Palestinian  hog's-back,  and  have  filled, 
up  to  the  "brim,  every  depression  on  its  surface.  Therefore 
it  could  not  have  failed  to  fill  that  remarkable  trench  in 
which  the  Dead  Sea,  the  Jordan,  and  the  Sea  of  Galilee  lie, 
and  which  is  known  as  the  "  Jordan- Arabah  "  valley. 

This  long  and  deep  hollow  extends  more  than  200  miles, 
from  near  the  site  of  ancient  Dan  in  the  north,  to  the  water 
parting  at  the  head  of  the  Wady  Arabah  in  the  south ;  and 
its  deepest  part,  at  the  bottom  of  the  basin  of  the  Dead  Sea, 
lies  2,500  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  adjacent  Mediterra- 
nean. The  lowest  portion  of  the  rim  of  the  Jordan- Arabah 
valley  is  situated  at  the  village  of  El  Fuleh,  257  feet  above 
the  Mediterranean.  Everywhere  else  the  circumjacent 
heights  rise  to  a  very  much  greater  altitude.  Hence,  of 
the  water  which  stood  over  the  Syrian  tableland,  when  as 
much  drained  off  as  could  run  away,  enough  would  remain 
to  form  a  "  Mere  "  without  an  outlet,  2,757  feet  deep,  over 
the  present  site  of  the  Dead  Sea.  From  this  time  forth,  the 
level  of  the  Palestinian  mere  could  be  lowered  only  by  evap- 
oration. It  is  an  extremely  interesting  fact,  which  has  hap- 
pily escaped  capture  for  the  purposes  of  the  energetic  misun- 
derstanding, that  the  valley,  at  one  time,  was  filled,  certainly 
within  150  feet  of  this  height — probably  higher.  And  it  is 
almost  equally  certain,  that  the  time  at  which  this  great 
Jordan- Arabah  mere  reached  its  highest  level  coincides  with 
the  glacial  epoch.     But  then  the  evidence  which  goes  to 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  477 

prove  this,  also  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  this  state  of 
things  obtained  at  a  period  considerably  older  than  even 
4004  b.  c,  when  the  world,  according  to  the  "Helps"  (or 
shall  we  say  "  Hindrances  ")  provided  for  the  simple  student 
of  the  Bible,  was  created ;  that  it  was  not  brought  about  by 
any  diluvial  catastrophe,  but  was  the  result  of  a  change  in 
the  relative  activities  of  certain  natural  operations  which  are 
quietly  going  on  now ;  and  that,  since  the  level  of  the  mere 
began  to  sink,  many  thousand  years  ago,  no  serious  catas- 
trophe of  any  description  has  affected  the  valley. 

The  evidence  that  the  Jordan-Arabah  valley  really  was 
once  filled  with  water,  the  surface  of  which  reached  within 
160  feet  of  the  level  of  the  pass  of  Jezrael,  and  possibly  stood 
higher,  is  this :  Eemains  of  alluvial  strata,  containing  shells 
of  the  freshwater  mollusks  which  still  inhabit  the  valley, 
worn  down  into  terraces  by  waves  which  long  rippled  at  the 
same  level,  and  furrowed  by  the  channels  excavated  by  mod- 
ern rainfalls,  have  been  found  at  the  former  height;  and 
they  are  repeated,  at  intervals,  lower  down,  until  the  Ghor, 
or  plain  of  the  Jordan,  itself  an  alluvial  deposit,  is  reached. 
These  strata  attain  a  considerable  thickness  ;  and  they  indi- 
cate that  the  epoch  at  which  the  freshwater  mere  of  Pales- 
tine reached  its  highest  level  is  extremely  remote ;  that  its 
diminution  has  taken  place  very  slowly,  and  with  periods  of 
rest,  during  which  the  first  formed  deposits  were  cut  down 
into  terraces.  This  conclusion  is  strikingly  borne  out  by 
other  facts.  A  volcanic  region  stretches  from  Galilee  to 
Gilead  and  the  Hauran,  on  each  side  of  the  northern  end  of 
the  valley.  Some  of  the  streams  of  basaltic  lava  which  have 
been  thrown  out  from  its  craters  and  clefts  in  times  of  which 
history  has  no  record,  have  run  athwart  the  course  of  the 
Jordan  itself,  or  of  that  of  some  of  its  tributary  streams. 
The  lava  streams,  therefore,  must  be  of  later  date  than  the 
depressions  they  fill.  And  yet,  where  they  have  thus  tem- 
porarily dammed  the  Jordan  and  the  Jermuk,  these  streams 
have  had  time  to  cut  through  the  hard  basalts  and  lay  bare 


478  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

the  beds,  over  which,  before  the  lava  streams  invaded  them, 
they  flowed. 

In  fact,  the  antiquity  of  the  present  Jordan- Arabah  val- 
ley, as  a  hollow  in  a  tableland,  out  of  reach  of  the  sea,  and 
troubled  by  no  diluvial  or  other  disturbances,  beyond  the 
volcanic  eruptions  of  Gilead  and  of  Galilee,  is  vast,  even  as 
estimated  by  a  geological  standard.  No  marine  deposits  of 
later  than  miocene  age  occur  in  or  about  it ;  and  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  Syro- Arabian  plateau  has 
been  dry  land,  throughout  the  pliocene  and  later  epochs, 
down  to  the  present  time.  Raised  beaches,  containing  re- 
cent shells,  on  the  Levantine  shores  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  on  those  of  the  Eed  Sea,  testify  to  a  geologically  recent- 
change  of  the  sea  level  to  the  extent  of  250  or  300  feet,  prob- 
ably produced  by  the  slow  elevation  of  the  land ;  and,  as  I 
have  already  remarked,  the  alluvial  plain  of  the  Euphrates 
and  Tigris  appears  to  have  been  affected  in  the  same  way 
though  seemingly  to  a  less  extent.  But  of  violent,  or  catas- 
trophic, change  there  is  no  trace.  Even  the  volcanic  out- 
bursts have  flowed  in  even  sheets  over  the  old  land  surface ; 
and  the  long  lines  of  the  horizontal  terraces  which  remain, 
testify  to  the  geological  insignificance  of  such  earthquakes  as 
have  taken  place.  It  is,  indeed,  possible  that  the  original 
formation  of  the  valley  may  have  been  determined  by  the 
well-known  fault,  along  which  the  western  rocks  are  rela- 
tively depressed  and  the  eastern  elevated.  But,  whether  that 
fault  was  effected  slowly  or  quickly,  and  whenever  it  came 
into  existence,  the  excavation  of  the  valley  to  its  present 
width,  no  less  than  the  sculpturing  of  its  steep  walls  and  of 
the  innumerable  deep  ravines  which  score  them  down  to  the 
very  bottom,  are  indubitably  due  to  the  operation  of  rain  and 
streams,  during  an  enormous  length  of  time,  without  inter- 
ruption or  disturbance  of  any  magnitude.  The  alluvial  de- 
posits which  have  been  mentioned  are  continued  into  the 
lateral  ravines,  and  have  more  or  less  filled  them.  But,  since 
the  waters  have  been  lowered,  these  deposits  have  been  cut 


IIASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  479 

down  to  great  depths,  and  are  still  being  excavated  by  the 
present  temporary,  or  permanent  streams.  Hence,  it  follows, 
that  all  these  ravines  must  have  existed  before  the  time  at 
which  the  valley  was  occupied  by  the  great  mere.  This  fact 
acquires  a  peculiar  importance  when  we  proceed  to  consider 
the  grounds  for  the  conclusion  that  the  old  Palestinian  mere 
attained  its  highest  level  in  the  cold  period  of  the  pleistocene 
epoch.  It  is  well  known  that  glaciers  formerly  came  low 
down  on  the  flanks  of  Lebanon  and  Antilebanon ;  indeed, 
the  old  moraines  are  the  haunts  of  the  few  survivors  of  the 
famous  cedars.  This  implies  a  perennial  snow-cap  of  great 
extent  on  Hermon ;  therefore,  a  vastly  greater  supply  of 
water  to  the  sources  of  the  Jordan  which  rise  on  its  flanks ; 
and,  in  addition,  such  a  total  change  in  the  general  climate, 
that  the  innumerable  Wadys,  now  traversed  only  by  occa- 
sional storm  torrents,  must  have  been  occupied  by  perennial 
streams.  All  this  involves  a  lower  annual  temperature  and 
a  moist  and  rainy  atmosphere.  If  such  a  change  of  mete- 
orological conditions  could  be  effected  now,  when  the  loss  by 
evaporation  from  the  surface  of  the  Dead  Sea  salt-pan  bal- 
ances all  the  gain  from  the  Jordan  and  other  streams,  the 
scale  would  be  turned  in  the  other  direction.  The  waters  of 
the  Dead  Sea  would  become  diluted ;  its  level  would  rise ; 
it  would  cover,  first  the  plain  of  the  Jordan,  then  the  lake 
of  Galilee,  then  the  middle  Jordan  between  this  lake  and 
that  of  Huleh  (the  ancient  Merom) ;  and,  finally,  it  would 
encroach,  northward,  along  the  course  of  the  upper  Jordan, 
and,  southward,  up  the  Wady  Arabah,  until  it  reached  some 
260  feet  above  the  level  of  the  Mediterranean,  when  it  would 
attain  a  permanent  level,  by  sending  any  superfluity  through 
the  pass  of  Jezrael  to  swell  the  waters  of  the  Kishon,  and 
flow  thence  into  the  Mediterranean. 

Reverse  the  process,  in  consequence  of  the  excess  of  loss 
by  evaporation  over  gain  by  inflow,  which  must  have  set  in 
as  the  climate  of  Syria  changed  after  the  end  of  the  pleisto- 
cene epoch,  and  (without  taking  into  consideration  any  other 


480  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

circumstances)  the  present  state  of  things  must  eventually 
be  reached — a  concentrated  saliue  solution  in  the  deepest 
part  of  the  valley — water,  rather  more  charged  with  saline 
matter  than  ordinary  fresh  water,  in  the  lower  Jordan  and 
the  lake  of  Galilee — fresh  waters,  still  largely  derived  from 
the  snows  of  Hermon,  in  the  upper  Jordan  and  in  lake  Hu- 
leh.  But,  if  the  full  state  of  Jordan  valley  marks  the  gla- 
cial epoch,  then  it  follows  that  the  excavation  of  that  valley 
by  atmospheric  agencies  must  have  occupied  an  immense  an- 
tecedent time — a  large  part,  perhaps  the  whole,  of  the  plio- 
cene epoch ;  and  we  are  thus  forced  to  the  conclusion  that, 
since  the  miocene  epoch,  the  physical  conformation  of  the 
Holy  Land  has  been  substantially  what  it  is  now.  It  has 
been  more  or  less  rained  upon,  searched  by  earthquakes  here 
and  there,  partially  overflowed  by  lava  streams,  slowly  raised 
(relatively  to  the  sea-level)  a  few  hundred  feet.  But  there 
is  not  a  shadow  of  ground  for  supposing  that,  throughout 
all  this  time,  terrestrial  animals  have  ceased  to  inhabit  a  large 
part  of  its  surface ;  or  that,  in  many  parts,  they  have  been, 
in  any  respect,  incommoded  by  the  changes  which  have  taken 
place. 

The  evidence  of  the  general  stability  of  the  physical  con- 
ditions of  Western  Asia,  which  is  furnished  by  Palestine  and 
by  the  Euphrates  Valley,  is  only  fortified  if  we  extend  our 
view  northward  to  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian.  The 
Caspian  is  a  sort  of  magnified  replica  of  the  Dead  Sea.  The 
bottom  of  the  deepest  part  of  this  vast  inland  mere  is  3000 
feet  below  the  level  of  the  Mediterranean,  while  its  surface 
is  lower  by  85  feet.  At  present,  it  is  separated,  on  the  west, 
by  wide  spaces  of  dry  land  from  the  Black  Sea,  which  has 
the  same  height  as  the  Mediterranean,  and,  on  the  east,  from 
the  Aral,  138  feet  above  that  level.  The  waters  of  the  Black 
Sea,  now  in  communication  with  the  Mediterranean  by  the 
Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus,  are  salt,  but  become  brack- 
ish northward,  where  the  rivers  of  the  steppes  pour  in  a 
great  volume  of  fresh  water.     Those  of  the  shallower  north- 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  481 

ern  half  of  the  Caspian  are  similarly  affected  by  the  Volga 
and  the  Ural,  while,  in  the  shallow  bays  of  the  southern  di- 
vision, they  become  extremely  saline  in  consequence  of  the 
intense  evaporation.  The  Aral  Sea,  though  supplied  by  the 
Jaxartes  and  the  Oxus,  has  brackish  water.  There  is  evi- 
dence that,  in  the  pliocene  and  pleistocene  periods,  to  go  no 
further  back,  the  strait  of  the  Dardanelles  did  not  exist,  and 
that  the  vast  area,  from  the  valley  of  the  Danube  to  that  of 
the  Jaxartes,  was  covered  by  brackish,  or,  in  some  parts, 
fresh  water  to  a  height  of  at  least  200  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  Mediterranean.  At  the  present  time,  the  water-parting 
which  separates  the  northern  part  of  the  basin  of  the  Cas- 
pian from  the  vast  plains  traversed  by  the  Tobol  and  the 
Obi,  in  their  course  to  the  Arctic  Ocean,  appears  to  be  less 
than  200  feet  above  the  latter.  It  would  seem,  therefore,  to 
be  very  probable  that,  under  the  climatal  conditions  of  part 
of  the  pleistocene  period,  the  valley  of  the  Obi  played  the 
same  part  in  relation  to  the  Ponto-Aralian  sea,  as  that  of  the 
Kishon  may  have  done  to  the  great  mere  of  the  Jordan  val- 
ley ;  and  that  the  outflow  formed  the  channel  by  which  the 
well-known  Arctic  elements  of  the  fauna  of  the  Caspian  en- 
tered it.  For  the  fossil  remains  imbedded  in  the  strata  con- 
tinuously deposited  in  the  Aralo-Caspian  area,  since  the  lat- 
ter end  of  the  miocene  epoch,  show  no  sign  that,  from  that 
time  onward,  it  has  ever  been  covered  by  sea  water.  There- 
fore, the  supposition  of  a  free  inflow  of  the  Arctic  Ocean, 
which  at  one  time  was  generally  received,  as  well  as  that  of 
various  hypothetical  deluges  from  that  quarter,  must  be  se- 
riously questioned. 

The  Caspian  and  the  Aral  stand  in  somewhat  the  same 
relation  to  the  vast  basin  of  dry  land  in  which  they  lie,  as 
the  Dead  Sea  and  the  lake  of  Galilee  to  the  Jordan  valley. 
They  are  the  remains  of  a  vast,  mostly  brackish,  mere,  which 
has  dried  up  in  consequence  of  the  excess  of  evaporation 
over  supply,  since  the  cold  and  damp  climate  of  the  pleisto- 
cene epoch  gave  place  tcu  the  increasing  dryness  and  great 


482  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

summer  heats  of  Central  Asia  in  more  modern  times.  The 
desiccation  of  the  Aralo-Caspian  basin,  which  communicated 
with  the  Black  Sea  only  by  a  comparatively  narrow  and  shal- 
low strait  along  the  present  valley  of  Manytsch,  the  bottom  of 
which  was  less  than  100  feet  above  the  Mediterranean,  must 
have  been  vastly  aided  by  the  erosion  of  the  strait  of  the 
Dardanelles  toward  the  end  of  the  pleistocene  epoch,  or  per- 
haps later.  For  the  result  of  thus  opening  a  passage  for  the 
waters  of  the  Black  Sea  into  the  Mediterranean  must  have 
been  the  gradual  lowering  of  its  level  to  that  of  the  latter 
sea.  When  this  process  had  gone  so  far  as  to  bring  down 
the  Black  Sea  water  to  within  less  than  a  hundred  feet  of  its 
present  level,  the  strait  of  Manytsch  ceased  to  exist ;  and  the 
vast  body  of  fresh  water  brought  down  by  the  Danube,  the 
Dnieper,  the  Don,  and  other  South  Russian  rivers  was  cut 
off  from  the  Caspian,  and  eventually  delivered  into  the  Med- 
iterranean. Thus,  there  is  as  conclusive  evidence  as  one  can 
well  hope  to  obtain  in  these  matters,  that,  north  of  the  Eu- 
phrates valley,  the  physical  geography  of  an  area  as  large  as 
all  Central  Europe  has  remained  essentially  unchanged,  from 
the  miocene  period  down  to  our  time ;  just  as,  to  the  west  of 
the  Euphrates  valley,  Palestine  has  exhibited  a  similar  per- 
sistence of  geographical  type.  To  the  south,  the  valley  of 
the  Nile  tells  exactly  the  same  story.  The  holes  bored  by 
miocene  mollusks  in  the  cliffs  east  and  west  of  Cairo  bear 
witness  that,  in  the  miocene  epoch,  it  contained  an  arm  of 
the  sea,  the  bottom  of  which  has  since  been  gradually  filled 
up  by  the  alluvium  of  the  Nile,  and  elevated  to  its  present 
position.  But  the  higher  parts  of  the  Mokattam  and  of  the 
desert  about  Ghizeh,  have  been  dry  land  from  that  time  to 
this.  Too  little  is  known  of  the  geology  of  Persia,  at  pres- 
ent, to  allow  any  positive  conclusion  to  be  enunciated.  But, 
taking  the  name  to  indicate  the  whole  continental  mass  of 
Iran,  between  the  valleys  of  the  Indus  and  the  Euphrates, 
the  supposition  that  its  physical  geography  has  remained  un- 
changed for  an  immensely  long  period  is  hardly  rash.     The 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  453 

country  is,  in  fact,  an  enormous  basin,  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  a  mountainous  rim,  and  subdivided  within  by  ridges 
into  plateaus  and  hollows,  the  bottom  of  the  deepest  of 
which,  in  the  province  of  Seistan,  probably  descends  to  the 
level  of  the  Indian  Ocean.  These  depressions  are  occupied 
by  salt  marshes  and  deserts,  in  which  the  waters  of  the 
streams  which  flow  down  the  sides  of  the  basin  are  now  dis- 
sipated by  evaporation.  I  am  acquainted  with  no  evidence 
that  the  present  Iranian  basin  was  ever  occupied  by  the  sea ; 
but  the  accumulations  of  gravel  over  a  great  extent  of  its 
surface  indicate  long-continued  water  action.  It  is,  there- 
fore, a  fair  presumption  that  large  lakes  have  covered  much 
of  its  present  deserts,  and  that  they  have  dried  up  by  the 
operation  of  the  same  changed  climatal  conditions  as  those 
which  have  reduced  the  Caspian  and  the  Dead  Sea  to  their 
present  dimensions.* 

Thus  it  would  seem  that  the  Euphrates  valley,  the  center 
of  the  fabled  Noachian  deluge,  is  also  the  center  of  a  region 
covering  some  millions  of  square  miles  of  the  present  con- 
tinents of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  in  which  all  the  facts, 
relevant  to  the  argument,  at  present  known,  converge  to  the 
conclusion  that,  since  the  miocene  epoch,  the  essential  feat- 
ures of  its  physical  geography  have  remained  unchanged ; 
that  it  has  neither  been  depressed  below  the  sea,  nor  swept 
by  diluvial  waters  since  that  time ;  and  that  the  Chaldasan 
version  of  the  legend  of  a  flood  in  the  Euphrates  valley  is,  of 
all  those  which  are  extant,  the  only  one  which  is  even  consistent 
with  probability,  since  it  depicts  a  local  inundation  not  more 
severe  than  one  which  might  be  brought  about  by  a  concur- 
rence of  favorable  conditions  at  the  present  day,  and  which 
might  probably  have  been  more  easily  effected  when  the 
Persian  Gulf  extended  farther  north.     Hence,  the  recourse 

*  An  instructive  parallel  is  exhibited  by  the  "  Great  Basin ''  of  North 
America.  See  the  remarkable  memoir  on  "  Lake  Bonneville "  by  Mr. 
G.  K.  Gilbert,  of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  just  published. . 


484:  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

to  the  "  glacial  epoch "  for  some  event  which  might  color- 
ably  represent  a  flood,  distinctly  asserted  by  the  only  author- 
ity for  it  to  have  occurred  in  historical  times,  is  peculiarly 
unfortunate.  Even  a  Welsh  antiquarian  might  hesitate  over 
the  supposition  that  a  tradition  of  the  fate  of  Moel  Tryfaen, 
in  the  glacial  epoch,  had  furnished  the  basis  of  fact  for  a 
legend  which  arose  among  people  whose  own  experience 
abundantly  supplied  them  with  the  needful  precedents. 
Moreover,  if  evidence,  of  interchanges  of  land  and  sea  are  to 
be  accepted  as  "  confirmations  "  of  Noah's  deluge,  there  are 
plenty  of  sources  for  the  tradition  to  be  had  much  nearer 
than  Wales. 

The  depression  now  filled  by  the  Eed  Sea,  for  example, 
appears  to  be,  geologically,  of  very  recent  origin.  The  later 
deposits  found  on  its  shores,  two  or  three  hundred  feet  above 
the  sea  level,  contain  no  remains  older  than  those  of  the 
present  fauna ;  while,  as  I  have  already  mentioned,  the  valley 
of  the  adjacent  delta  of  the  Nile  was  a  gulf  of  the  sea  in 
miocene  times.  But  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  that 
the  change  of  relative  level  which  admitted  the  waters  of  the 
Indian  Ocean  between  Arabia  and  Africa,  took  place  any 
faster  than  that  which  is  now  going  on  in  Greenland  and 
Scandinavia,  and  which  has  left  their  inhabitants  undis- 
turbed. Even  more  remarkable  changes  were  effected, 
toward  the  end  of,  or  since,  the  glacial  epoch,  over  the 
region  now  occupied  by  the  Levantine  Mediterranean  and 
the  ^Egean  Sea.  The  eastern  coast  region  of  Asia  Minor, 
the  western  of  Greece,  and  many  of  the  intermediate  islands, 
exhibit  thick  masses  of  stratified  deposits  of  later  tertiary 
age  and  of  purely  lacustrine  characters ;  and  it  is  remark- 
able that,  on  the  south  side  of  the  island  of  Crete,  such 
masses  present  steep  cliffs  facing  the  sea,  so  that  the  south- 
ern boundary  of  the  lake  in  which  they  were  formed  must 
have  been  situated  where  the  sea  now  flows.  Indeed,  there 
are  valid  reasons  for  the  supposition  that  the  dry  land  once 
extended  far  to  the  west  of  the  present  Levantine  coast,  and 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  485 

not  improbably  forced  the  Nile  to  seek  an  outlet  to  the  north- 
east of  its  present  delta — a  possibility  of  no  small  importance 
in  relation  to  certain  puzzling  facts  in  the  geographical  dis- 
tribution of  animals  in  this  region.  At  any  rate,  continuous 
land  joined  Asia  Minor  with  the  Balkan  peninsula ;  and  its 
surface  bore  deep  freshwater  lakes,  apparently  disconnected 
with  the  Ponto-Aralian  sea.  This  state  of  things  lasted  long 
enough  to  allow  of  the  formation  of  the  thick  lacustrine 
strata  to  which  I  have  referred.  I  am  not  aware  that  there 
is  the  smallest  ground  for  the  assumption  that  the  iEgean 
land  was  broken  up  in  consequence  of  any  of  the  "  catastro- 
phes "  which  are  so  commonly  invoked.*  For  anything  that 
appears  to  the  contrary,  the  narrow,  steep-sided,  straits  be- 
tween the  islands  of  the  iEgean  archipelago  may  have  been 
originally  brought  about  by  ordinary  atmospheric  and  stream 
action;  and  then  filled  from  the  Mediterranean,  during  a 
slow  submergence  proceeding  from  the  south  northward. 
The  strait  of  the  Dardanelles  is  bounded  by  undisturbed 
pleistocene  strata  forty  feet  thick,  through  which,  to  all  ap- 
pearance, the  present  passage  has  been  quietly  cut. 

That  Olympus  and  Ossa  were  torn  asunder  and  the  waters 
of  the  Thessalian  basin  poured  forth,  is  a  very  ancient  notion, 
and  an  often  cited  "  confirmation  "  of  Deucalion's  flood.  It 
has  not  yet  ceased  to  be  in  vogue,  apparently  because  those 
who  entertain  it  are  not  aware  that  modern  geographical  in- 
vestigation has  conclusively  proved  that  the  gorge  of  the 
Peneus  is  as  typical  an  example  of  a  valley  of  erosion  as  any 
to  be  seen  in  Auvergne  or  in  Colorado,  f 

Thus,  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  vast  expanse  of 
country  which  can  be  proved  to  have  been  untouched  by  any 
catastrophe  before,  during,  and  since  the  "  glacial  epoch,"  lie 
the  great  areas  of  the  JEge&n  and  the  Eed  Sea,  in  which, 

*  It  is  true  that  earthquakes  are  common  enough,  but  they  are  in- 
competent to  produce  such  changes  as  those  which  have  taken  place. 

f  See  Teller,  Geologische  Beschreibung  des  sud-ostlichen  Thessalien : 
Denkschriften  d.  Akademie  der  "Wissenchaften,  Wien,  Bd.  xl.  p.  199. 


486  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

during  or  since  the  glacial  epoch,  changes  of  the  relative 
positions  of  land  and  sea  have  taken  place,  in  comparison 
with  which  the  submergence  of  Moel  Tryfaen,  with  all  Wales 
and  Scotland  to  boot,  does  not  come  to  much. 

What,  then,  is  the  relevancy  of  talk  about  the  "  glacial 
epoch  "  to  the  question  of  the  historical  veracity  of  the  narrator 
of  the  story  of  the  Noachian  deluge  ?  So  far  as  my  knowledge 
goes,  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  that  destructive  inun- 
dations were  more  common  over  the  general  surface  of  the 
earth  in  the  glacial  epoch  than  they  have  been  before  or  since. 
No  doubt  the  fringe  of  an  ice-covered  region  must  be  always 
liable  to  them ;  but,  if  we  examine  the  records  of  such  catas- 
trophes in  historical  times,  those  produced  in  the  deltas  of 
great  rivers,  or  in  lowlands  like  Holland,  by  sudden  floods, 
combined  with  gales  of  wind  or  with  unusual  tides,  far  excel 
all  others. 

With  respect  to  such  inundations  as  are  the  consequences 
of  earthquakes,  and  other  slight  movements  of  the  crust  of  the 
earth,  I  have  never  heard  of  anything  to  show  that  they  were 
more  frequent  and  severer  in  the  quaternary  or  tertiary  epochs 
than  they  are  now.  In  the  discussion  of  these,  as  of  all 
other  geological  problems,  the  appeal  to  needless  catas- 
trophes is  born  of  that  impatience  of  the  slow  and  painful 
search  after  sufficient  causes  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature 
which  is  a  temptation  to  all,  though  only  energetic  ignorance 
nowadays  completely  succumbs  to  it. 


Postscript. 

My  best  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  Gladstone  for  his  courteous 
withdrawal  of  one  of  the  statements  to  which  I  have  thought  it 
needful  to  take  exception.  The  familiarity  with  controversy,  to 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  alludes,  will  have  accustomed  him  to  the 
misadventures  .which  arise  when,  as  sometimes  will  happen  in 
the  heat  of  fence,  the  buttons  come  off  the  foils.    I  trust  that 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  487 

any  scratch  which  he  may  have  received  will  heal  as  quickly  as 
ray  own  flesh  wounds  have  done. 

A  contribution  to  the  last  number  of  this  Review  of  a  differ- 
ent order  would  be  left  unnoticed,  were  it  not  that  my  silence 
would  convert  me  into  an  accessory  to  misrepresentations  of  a 
very  grave  character.  However,  I  shall  restrict  myself  to  the 
barest  possible  statement  of  facts,  leaving  my  readers  to  draw 
their  own  conclusions. 

In  an  article  entitled  "  A  Great  Lesson,'1  published  in  this 
Review  for  September,  1887: 

(1)  The  Duke  of  Argyll  says  the  "  overthrow  of  Darwin's 
speculations  "  (p.  301)  concerning  the  origin  of  coral  reefs,  which 
he  fancied  had  taken  place,  had  been  received  by  men  of  science 
"with  a  grudging  silence  as  far  as  public  discussion  is  con- 
cerned" (p.  301). 

The  truth  is  that,  as  every  one  acquainted  with  the  literature 
of  the  subject  was  well  aware,  the  views  supposed  to  have  ef- 
fected this  overthrow  had  been  fully  and  publicly  discussed  by 
Dana  in  the  United  States ;  by  Geikie,  Green,  and  Prestwich  in 
this  country ;  by  Lapparent  in  France ;  and  by  Credner  in  Ger- 
many. 

(2)  The  Duke  of  Argyll  says  "  that  no  serious  reply  has  ever 
been  attempted  "  (p.  305). 

The  truth  is  that  the  highest  living  authority  on  the  sub- 
ject, Professor  Dana,  published  a  most  weighty  reply,  two  years 
before  the  Duke  of  Argyll  committed  himself  to  this  statement. 

(3)  The  Duke  of  Argyll  uses  the  preceding  products  of  de- 
fective knowledge,  multiplied  by  excessive  imagination,  to 
illustrate  the  manner  in  which  "certain  accepted  opinions" 
established  "  a  sort  of  Reign  of  Terror  in  their  own  behalf  "  (p. 
307). 

The  truth  is  that  no  plea,  except  that  of  total  ignorance  of 
the  literature  of  the  subject,  can  excuse  the  errors  cited,  and 
that  the  "  Reign  of  Terror  "  is  a  purely  subjective  phenomenon. 

(4)  The  letter  in  Nature  for  the  17th  of  November,  1887,  to 
which  I  am  referred,  contains  neither  substantiation,  nor  re- 
tractation, of  statements  1  and  2.  Nevertheless,  it  repeats  num- 
ber 3.  The  Duke  of  Argyll  says  of  his  article  that  it  "  has  done 
what  I  intended  it  to  do.    It  has  called  wide  attention  to  the  in- 


488  CONTROVERTED  QUESTIONS. 

fluence  of  mere  authority  in  establishing  erroneous  theories  and 
in  retarding  the  progress  of  scientific  truth." 

(5)  The  Duke  of  Argyll  illustrates  the  influence  of  his  fictiti- 
ous "  Reign  of  Terror  "  by  the  statement  that  Mr.  John  Murray 
u  was  strongly  advised  against  the  publication  of  his  views  in 
derogation  of  Darwin's  long-accepted  theory  of  the  coral  islands, 
and  was  actually  induced  to  delay  it  for  two  years "  (p.  307). 
And  in  Nature  for  the  17th  November,  1887,  the  Duke  of  Argyll 
states  that  he  has  seen  a  letter  from  Sir  Wyville  Thomson  in 
which  he  "  urged  and  almost  insisted  that  Mr.  Murray  should 
withdraw  the  reading  of  his  papers  on  the  subject  from  the 
Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh.  This  was  in  February,  1877."  The 
next  paragraph,  however,  contains  the  confession :  "  No  special 
reason  was  assigned."  The  Duke  of  Argyll  proceeds  to  give  a 
speculative  opinion  that  "  Sir  Wyville  dreaded  some  injury  to 
the  scientific  reputation  of  the  body  of  which  he  was  the  chief." 
Truly,  a  very  probable  supposition ;  but  as  Sir  "Wyville  Thom- 
son's tendencies  were  notoriously  anti-Darwinian,  it  does  not 
appear  to  me  to  lend  the  slightest  justification  to  the  Duke  of 
Argyll's  insinuation  that  the  Darwinian  "terror"  influenced 
him.  However,  the  question  was  finally  set  at  rest  by  a  letter 
which  appeared  in  Nature  (29th  of  December,  1887)  in  which  the 
writer  says  that : 

talking  with  Sir  Wyville  about  "Murray's  new  theory,"  I  asked  what 
objection  he  had  to  its  being  brought  before  the  public  1  The  answer 
simply  was:  he  considered  that  the  grounds  of  the  theory  had  not,  as 
yet,  been  sufficiently  investigated  or  sufficiently  corroborated,  and  that 
therefore  any  immature,  dogmatic  publication  of  it  would  do  less  than 
little  service  either  to  science  or  to  the  author  of  the  paper. 

Sir  Wyville  Thomson  was  an  intimate  friend  of  mine,  and  I 
am  glad  to  have  been  afforded  one  more  opportunity  of  clearing 
his  character  from  the  aspersions  which  have  been  so  recklessly 
cast  upon  his  good  sense  and  his  scientific  honor. 

(6)  As  to  the  "  overthrow "  of  Darwin's  theory,  which, 
according  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  was  patent  to  every  un- 
prejudiced person  four  years  ago,  I  have  recently  become  ac- 
quainted with  a  work,  in  which  a  really  competent  authority,* 

*  Dr.  Langenbeck  Die  Theorien  uber  die  Entstehung  der  Korallen- 
Inseln  und  Korallen-Riffe  (p.  13),  1890. 


HASISADRA'S  ADVENTURE.  489 

thoroughly  acquainted  with  all  the  new  lights  which  have 
been  thrown  upon  the  subject  during  the  last  ten  years,  pro- 
nounces the  judgment;  firstly,  that  some  of  the  facts  brought 
forward  by  Messrs.  Murray  and  Guppy  against  Darwin's  theory 
are  not  facts ;  secondly,  that  the  others  are  reconcilable  with 
Darwin's  theory ;  and,  thirdly,  that  the  theories  of  Messrs.  Mur- 
ray and  Guppy  "  are  contradicted  by  a  series  of  important  facts  " 
(p.  13). 

Perhaps  I  had  better  draw  attention  to  the  circumstance  that 
Dr.  Langenbeck  writes  under  shelter  of  the  guns  of  the  fortress 
of  Strassburg ;  and  may  therefore  be  presumed  to  be  unaffected 
by  those  dreams  of  a  u  Reign  of  Terror  "  which  seem  to  disturb 
the  peace  of  some  of  us  in  these  islands  (April,  1891). 


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of  synthetic  philosophy." — Chicago  Evening  Journal. 

"  Mr.  Spencer's  style  is  so  lucid  that  to  study  political  economy  of  him  is  rather  a 
pleasure  than  a  task." — Chicago  Tribune. 

C*OCIAZ   STATICS.      New  and    revised  edition,  in- 

*— '  eluding  "The  Man  versus  The  State,"  a  series  of  essays  on 
political  tendencies  heretofore  published  separately.  i2mo. 
420  pages*    Cloth,  $2.00. 

Having  been  much  annoyed  by  the  persistent  quotation  from  the  old  edi- 
tion of  "Social  Statics,"  in  the  face  of  repeated  warnings,  of  views  which 
he  had  abandoned,  and  by  the  misquotation  of  others  which  he  still  holds, 
Mr.  Spencer  some  ten  years  ago  stopped  the  sale  of  the  book  in  England  and 
prohibited  its  translation.  But  the  rapid  spread  of  communistic  theories 
gave  new  life  to  these  misrepresentations  ;  hence  Mr.  Spencer  decided  to 
delay  no  longer  a  statement  of  his  mature  opinions  on  the  rights  of  individuals 
and  the  duty  of  the  state. 

Contents:  Happiness  as  an  Immediate  Aim. — Unguided  Expediency. — The 
Moral-Sense  Doctrine.— What  is  Morality  ? — The  Evanescence  [?  Diminution]  of  Kv.iL. 
— Greatest  Happiness  must  be  sought  indirectly. — Derivation  of  a  First  Principle. — 
Secondary  Derivation  of  a  First  Principle  — First  Principle. — Application  of  this  First 
Principle— The  Right  of  Property.— Socialism.— The  Right  of  Property  in  Ideas.— 
The  Rights  of  Women.— The  Rights  of  Children.— Political  Rights.— The  Constitution 
of  the  State.— The  Duty  of  the  State.— The  Limit  of  State-Duty.— The  Regulation  of 
Commerce. — Religious  Establishments. — Poor-baws. — National  Education. — Govern- 
ment Colonization.— Sanitary  Supervision. — Currency,  Postal  Arrangements,  etc. — 
General  Considerations. — The  New  Toryism. — The  Coming  Slavery. — The  Sins  of 
Legislators. — The  Great  Political  Superstition. 

New  York :   D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

JO  VOLUTION    IN    SCIENCE,    PHILOSOPHY, 

-*--*'    AND  ART.    A  Series  of  Seventeen  Lectures  and  Discussions 
before  the  Brooklyn  Ethical  Association.      With  3  Portraits. 
466  pages.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00.     Separate  Lectures,  in  pam- 
phlet form,  10  cents  each. 
These  popular  essays,  by  some  of  the  ablest  exponents  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  in  this  country,  ■frill  be  read  with  pleasure  and  profit  by  all  lovers 
of  good  literature  and  suggestive  thought.     The  principle  of  evolution,  being 
universal,  admits  of  a  great  diversity  of  applications  and  illustrations  ;  some 
of  those  appearing  in  the  present  volume  are  distinctively  fresh  and  new. 

CONTENTS. 

1.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace By  Edward  D.  Cope,  Ph.  D. 

2.  Ernst  Haeckel By  Thaddeus  B.  Wakeman. 

3.  The  Scientific  Method By  Francis  E.  Abbot,  Ph.D. 

4.  Herbert  Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy.  By  Bent.  F.  Underwood. 

5.  Evolution  of  Chemistry By  Robert  G.  Eccles,  M.D. 

6.  Evolution  of  Electric  and  Magnetic  Physics. 

•  By  Arthur  E.  Kennelly. 

7.  Evolution  of  Botany By  Fred  J.  Wulling,  Ph.  G. 

8.  Zoology  as  related  to  Evolution    ...     By  Rev.  John  C.  Kimball. 

9.  Form  and  Color  in  Nature    ....     By  William  Potts. 

10.  Optics  as  related  to  Evolution     .     .     .  By  L.  A.  W.  Alleman,  M.  D. 

11.  Evolution  of  Art By  John  A.  Taylor. 

12.  Evolution  of  Architecture By  Rev.  John  W.  Chadwick. 

13.  Evolution  of  Sculpture By  Prof.  Thomas  Davidson. 

14.  Evolution  of  Painting By  Forrest  P.  Rundell. 

15.  Evolution  of  Music By  Z.  Sidney  Sampson. 

16.  Life  as  a  Fine  Art By  Lewis  G.  Janes,  M.  D. 

17.  The  Doctrine  of  Evolution  :  its  Scope  and  Influence. 

By  Prof.  John  Fiske. 

"A  valuable  series." — Chicago  Evening  Journal. 

*  The  addresses  include  some  of  the  most  important  presentations  and  epitomes  pub- 
lished in  America.  They  are  all  upon  important  subjects,  are  prepared  with  great  care, 
and  are  delivered  for  the  most  part  by  highly  eminent  authorities  " — Public  Opinion. 

"  As  a  popular  exposition  of  the  latest  phases  of  evolution  this  series  is  thorough  and 
authoritative. " — Cincinnati  Times-Star. 


New  York  :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


D.  APPLETON  &   CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


A 


N  ENGLISHMAN  IN  PARIS.    Notes  and  Recol- 
lections.    Two  volumes  in  one.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 


This  work  gives  an  intimate  and  most  entertaining  series  of  pictures  of 
life  in  Paris  during  the  reigns  of  Louis  Philippe  and  Louis  Napoleon.  It 
contains  personal  reminiscences  of  the  old  Latin  Quarter,  the  Revolution  of 
1848,  the  coup  <T£taty  society,  art,  and  letters  during  the  Second  Empire,  the 
siege  of  Paris,  and  the  reign  of  the  Commune.  The  author  enjoyed  the 
acquaintance  of  most  of  the  celebrities  of  this  time  ;  and  he  describes  Balzac, 
Alfred  de  Musset,  Sue,  the  elder  Dumas,  Taglioni,  Flaubert,  Auber,  FSlicien 
David,  Delacroix,  Horace  Vernet,  Decamps,  Guizot,  Thiers,  and  many 
others,  whose  appearance  in  these  pages  is  the  occasion  for  fresh  and  inter- 
esting anecdotes.  This  work  may  well  be  described  as  a  volume  of  inner 
history  written  from  an  exceptionally  favorable  point  of  view. 

"...  AH  questions  of  casuistry  aside,  the  taste  of  civilized  men  for  personal  details 
about  each  other  is  unquestionable.  .  .  .  For  this  reason  alone,  independently  of  its 
literary  merits,  '  An  Englishman  in  Paris  '  will  be  read  all  the  world  over  with  intense 
interest.  .  .  .  With  this  opportunity  for  knowing  men,  women,  and  affairs,  shrewd 
insight,  an  analytical  turn,  an  entire  self-command,  supplemented  by  an  easy,  fluent, 
unpretentious  style  of  telling  things,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  work  is  one  of 
the  most  interesting  which  has  come  from  the  press  in  a  long  time." — Chicago  Times. 

"The  author  of  these  reminiscences,  near  the  close  of  the  second  volume,  says  that 
for  private  reasons,  which  he  can  not  and  must  not  mention,  he  has  decided  not  to 
make  known  his  name.  He  is  aware  that  in  choosing  this  course  he  will  diminish  the 
value  of  his  work,  because  he  is  'sufficiently  well  known  to  inspire  the  reader  with  con- 
fidence.' Editor  and  publisher  alike  have  respected  this  decision,  and  the  book  appears 
without  the  author's  name  on  the  title-page.  English  papers,  which  have  uniformly 
borne  testimony  to  the  rare  interest  of  the  work,  have,  however,  disclosed  the  author's 
name.  They  say  it  is  Sir  Richard  Wallace.  ...  A  man  of  mark  Sir  Richard  was  in 
many  other  ways.  No  one  ever  shared  the  friendship  of  great  and  distinguished  men 
and  women  after  his  fashion  without  possessing  talents  and  charm  quite  out  of  the  com- 
mon order.  The  reader  of  these  volumes  will  not  marvel  more  at  the  unfailing  interest 
of  each  page  than  at  the  extraordinary  collection  of  eminent  persons  whom  the  author 
all  his  life  knew  intimately  and  met  frequently.  A  list  would  range  from  Dumas  the 
elder  to  David  the  sculptor,  from  Rachel  to  Balzac,  from  Louis  Napoleon  to  Eugene 
Delacroix,  from  Louis  Philippe  to  the  Princess  Demidoff,  and  from  Lola  Montez  to 
that  other  celebrated  woman,  Alphonsine  Plessis,  who  was  the  original  of  the  younger 
Dumas's  '  Dame  aux  Camellias.'  He  knew  these  persons  as  no  other  Englishman 
could  have  known  them,  and  he  writes  about  them  with  a  charm  that  has  all  the  at- 
traction of  the  most  pleasing  conversation.  The  reminiscences  were  written  only  a 
few  years  before  his  death.  .  .  ." — New  York  Times. 

"  We  have  rarely  happened  upon  more  fascinating  volumes  than  these  Recollec- 
tions. .  .  .  One  good  story  leads  on  to  another;  one  personality  brings  up  reminiscences 
of  another,  and  we  are  hurried  along  in  a  rattle  of  gayety.  .  .  .  We  have  heard  many 
suggestions  hazarded  as  to  the  anonymous  author  of  these  memoirs.  There  are  not 
above  three  or  four  Englishmen  with  whom  it  would  be  possible  to  identify  him.  We 
doubted  still  until  after  the  middle  of  the  second  volume  we  came  upon  two  or  three 
passages  which  strike  us  as  being  conclusive  circumstantial  evidence.  .  .  .  We  shall 
not  seek  to  strip  the  mask  from  the  anonymous."— London  Times. 


New  York  :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  1,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

MODERN    SCIENCE    SERIES. 
Edited  by  Sir  John  Lubbock,  Bart.,  F.  R  S. 

The  works  to  be  comprised  in  the  "Modern  Science  Series"  are  primarily  not  for 
the  student,  nor  for  the  young,  but  for  the  educated  layman  who  needs  to  know  the 
present  state  and  result  of  scientific  investigation,  and  who  has  neither  time  nor  inclina- 
tion to  become  a  specialist  on  the  subject  which  arouses  his  interest.  Each  book  will 
be  complete  in  itself,  and,  while  thoroughly  scientific  in  treatment,  its  subject  will  as 
far  as  possible  be  presented  in  language  divested  of  needless  technicalities.  Illustra- 
tions will  be  given  wherever  needed  by  the  text.  The  following  are  the  volumes  thus 
far  issued.     Others  are  in  preparation. 

*TTHE  CA  USE  OF  AN  ICE  AGE.     By  Sir  Robert 

J-        Ball,  LL.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  Royal  Astronomer  of  Ireland,  author  of 
"  Starland."     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

"  Sir  Robert  Ball's  book  is,  as  a  matter  of  course,  admirably  written.  Though  but  a 
small  one,  it  is  a  most  important  contribution  to  geology." — London  Saturday  Review. 

"  A  fascinating  subject,  cleverly  related  and  almost  colloquially  discussed." — Phila- 
delphia Public  Ledger. 

7^HE  HORSE:  A  Study  in  Natural.  History.  By 
William  H.  Flower,  C.  B.,  Director  in  the  British  Natural 
History  Museum.     With  27  Illustrations.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

"  The  author  admits  that  there  are  3,800  separate  treatises  on  the  horse  already  pub- 
lished, but  he  thinks  that  he  can  add  something  to  the  amount  of  useful  information 
now  before  the  public,  and  that  something  not  heretofore  written  will  be  found  in  this 
book.  The  volume  gives  a  large  amount  of  information,  both  scientific  and  practical, 
on  the  noble  animal  of  which  it  treats." — New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 


T 


'HE  OAK:  A  Study  in  Botany.     By  H.  Marshall 

Ward,  F.  R.  S.     With  53  Illustrations.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

"  An  excellent  volume  for  young  persons  with  a  taste  for  scientific  studies,  because 
it  will  lead  them  from  the  contemplation  of  superficial  appearances  and  those  generalities 
which  are  so  misleading  to  the  immature  mind,  to  a  consideration  of  the  methods  of 
systematic  investigation." — Boston  Beacon. 

"  From  the  acorn  to  the  timber  which  has  figured  so  gloriously  in  English  ships 
and  houses,  the  tree  is  fully  described,  and  all  its  living  and  preserved  beauties  and 
virtues,  in  nature  and  in  construction,  are  recounted  and  pictured." — Brooklyn  Eagle. 


E 


THNOLOGY    IN    FOLKIORE.      By    George 

Lawrence  Gomme,  F.  S.  A.,  President  of  the  Folklore  Society, 

etc.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $1.00. 

This  book  is  an  attempt  to  ascertain  and  set  forth  the  principles  upon 
which  folklore  may  be  classified,  in  order  to  arrive  at  some  of  the  results 
which  should  follow  its  study,  giving  the  subject  the  importance  it  deserves 
in  connection  with  researches  in  ethnology. 


New  York:   D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  i,  3,  &  5  Bond  Street. 


Date  Due 

DEC  -5  '66 

MAY  2' 

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"  Mic 

DEC   1 

4  1993 

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8  2000 

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BOSTON  COLLEGE 


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